That Was Part of the Plan
by LysandraLeigh
Summary: One year has passed since Lyra (formerly Bellatrix) Black traveled thirty years into an alternate future. Unfortunately, this means she's expected to go back to boring Hogwarts for more boring normal people stuff. Except, there is that Tournament thing. And Angel Black. And her muggleborn girlfriend. And maybe an international incident or two... Never mind, should be fun.
1. Much Ado About Elves

_NOTICE: This fic is a sequel to **All According to Plan**. Reading that — and probably also the interlude, **Nothing to do With the Plan** — is rather necessary to understand what the hell is going on._

_Without further ado..._

* * *

Everybody had heard of Cherri Black by now. She was _that elf_.

When a family fell apart, there were a limited number of things the surviving elves could do. Some might make their way to a closely related family, or perhaps just a suitable ally, absorbed into their own elves with a minimum of fanfare. After all, when the humans of families were tied with bonds of blood and friendship, the elves tended to be as well. In cases where this was less feasible — the family had been relatively isolated, or perhaps _too_ well-connected, no one family the obvious new home for the abandoned elves — they often found a temporary place with the Wizengamot or the Ministry. The magics at these public sites had been intentionally designed to allow elves to bind and unbind their magic freely, so they were often the safest places for elves to stay until such time as their dead family's assets were allocated to new heirs. The elves would then usually leave, following these properties into their new homes.

Dira was one of the several Black elves who, after the collapse of the family, had found his way to the Wizengamot. It was a temporary arrangement, still, but they'd stayed here far longer than they'd initially expected — their Lord was alive, but in prison, so the Black estate couldn't be passed to new heirs as it would usually be. But it would be, someday. Lord Sirius would not live forever, nor Mistress Bellatrix, and neither was likely to come home to them. The Family Magic, already broken, grew weak in their absence — the House was fallen, as good as dead. So they had left, moved to the Wizengamot and waited and mourned, knowing that a day would come when the affairs of the House were finally settled, and they would find a new home. They'd _moved on_.

All of them save two: Kreacher, who lingered at the London townhouse long after Lady Walburga's death, and Cherri, who had refused to abandon the family seat at Ancient House. All the Black elves knew their names, whispered them with a queer mix of admiration and pity.

It was a painfully noble thing, for an elf to choose to remain with the family, even after its death, haunting its grave like a living ghost. Beautiful, in its own way, an expression of absolute duty and overwhelming love, but horribly tragic as well.

Cherri and Kreacher were, they knew, the best of them. While Dira and the rest had all chosen to leave the dying House, these two could not, their dedication proven absolute, but in staying behind and surrendering to their mad devotion they were lost to the rest of them. Not only were the humans of their family gone, but these two exemplary elves were as well, two more to be added to the names of the dead they all carried in their hearts.

Elves like Cherri and Kreacher were the sort their own legends were centred on. Not simply those noble few who chose to die with their family — no, sometimes, sometimes their devotion was rewarded, a previously unknown heir returned or the falsely imprisoned released.

But even though Lord Sirius had been falsely imprisoned, had recently escaped the wizards' prison, this was not, the elves had known, one of _those _stories. Sirius was a traitor to the House. He had broken the Family Magic, done all he could to abandon them entirely, and even if he had wanted to save them, to pull the House back from the brink of destruction, he could hardly come to them, rebuild the House, not on the run from the wizards as he was.

It was only a matter of time, they had known, until nothing was left of the House of Black but stories. They had come close to dying before, of course, but it would take a miracle, now, to save them. It would take intervention by the gods themselves. In times past, this might not have been too much to hope for — the House of Black _was_ favored by their gods, everyone knew it, elves and humans alike. But Lord Sirius had angered the Dark Powers, rejecting them in a fit of madness. There would be no salvation, no divine intervention. Not this time.

Except there had been.

Against all hope, the Powers had breathed new life into the Family, like something out of the most fanciful of tales — spurred on to compassion, it was said, by Cherri's loyalty and love.

The humans had their own explanation for where Lady Lyra came from, Dira knew that. It was hard not to overhear things, sometimes, wandering the halls of the Wizengamot, the many offices attached to the Hall, he'd heard many interesting rumours over the years. The humans believed she was a secret child of Mistress Bellatrix, or perhaps a wayward metamorph returned to the Family, but no, the elves knew the truth. They'd all felt it, when she'd arrived, the sudden presence of her magic within the greater tapestry of the Family. She hadn't simply appeared in Britain, last summer, no, she'd appeared _in this world_.

Lady Lyra was from _elsewhere_.

The Powers Themselves had delivered Lady Lyra to the House of Black — directly to Cherri at Ancient House, or so the story went — in its greatest hour of need, an answer to all their prayers. All the Black elves knew this. The remains of the Family Magic had been destroyed since, but that changed nothing. The Family would go on.

The gods had given Cherri her Lady Lyra. This was known to be so. Like one of those fanciful legends, the sort of thing only heard in stories told to elflings, but it was so.

Cherri Black was _that elf_.

And she had finally come for them.

When she came to them, Dira didn't need to be told to know who it was. He _did_ recognise her — it had been over a decade since he'd laid eyes on her, but he would know her anyway, one never truly forgets the faces of one's family — but even if he didn't he would know. He would know from how everyone reacted to her presence. Not just the Black elves — everyone.

Cherri had popped into existence, in the middle of an otherwise unremarkable spring day, in the warrens under the Wizengamot Hall, and all the elves — not just the Blacks, all of them — could only stare, awed. Because they'd heard the stories, but it wasn't only that: there was something _different_ about Cherri, now.

It was known that, as intimate as the bond was, an elf was often affected by the character of the magic they bonded themselves to, be it that of a family or an individual. For that reason the Black elves had as complicated a reputation with other elves as the Black humans did with their own kind — the Covenant Onyx and Mela had made with the Dark had affected the elves of the Family as well, if not in quite the same way. Dira hadn't even noticed this until arriving at the Wizengamot, so many years ago now, but they _were_ different. Their magic was more powerful, if colder and sharper, every motion and every word more intense. He couldn't even put words to how, exactly, the other elves just seemed...softer, somehow.

The distinction was lesser than it had been at first, after a decade bound to the far more moderate magics of the Wizengamot Hall, especially with the Black Family Magics dispersed, but it was still there, a subtle barrier, glass walling them off from the rest of their kind.

And Cherri was _different_. She looked younger than Dira knew she should be — Cherri _was_ his great-aunt — but that needn't mean much, aging in elves varied greatly with the character of the magic they surrounded themselves with. No, she seemed taller, too. The way she stood among them, straight and confident and...almost mocking, really, something in her smile with the feel of a smirk _very_ un-elf-like, though _thoroughly_ Black. And the _magic_, Dira could feel it from here, dozens of metres away. Elves carried with them an echo of their masters', and Cherri's was...

It was _dark_, so dark, cold as ice but shifting like fire, like wind. It was powerful, yes, it was death and life all at once, it was _change_...

It was, in a word, _Black_.

Cherri spotted them immediately, set off for the exiled Black elves without a second of hesitation. All eyes were fixed on her, the warrens completely silent, elves respectfully ducking out of her way, everyone watching her pass in quiet awe. (She was _that elf_.) And Cherri seemed to revel in the attention, face bright with a smug smirk, her slow pace across the warrens almost seeming to take on a...well, a _swagger_, which...

It was _very_ un-elf-like behaviour, but what did they know? If the _Powers Themselves_ had seen fit to reward her, none of them really had any right to say anything. Cherri was justified in a _little_ pride, he thought.

Besides, she couldn't really help it: with the Family Magic gone, she'd be bound to Lady Lyra personally. In those cases, the elf _did_ tend to absorb a bit of their master's personality too, that's just the way it worked. (It was, in fact, part of the reason the custom of elves binding themselves to wards and family magics had started in the first place.) By this point, nobody at all could deny their new Lady Lyra was _very much_ a Black — it wasn't unexpected Cherri might become a little...odd, under her influence.

Soon Cherri was standing before them, they couple dozen remaining Black elves, tall and confident, Black magic heavy and invigorating on the air. For a long moment, she simply looked at them, and they looked back — still, like a calm before the storm, awestruck, _waiting_.

Whatever it was Cherri was waiting for, whatever she wanted to see, she apparently got it. Nodding, her lips twisted in a sardonic (_Black_) smirk, she spoke. Her voice was clear and strong, yet matter-of-fact, speaking on behalf of her Lady with every expectation of being _heard_. "It's time. Our Lady is calling you all back. And we have a lot of work to do."

There was hardly a moment of thought, not even a hint of hesitation. The elves of the House of Black dropped everything, and they followed.

She was, after all, _that elf_.

* * *

Winky read from the book aloud, but she didn't even hear the words she was saying, not really. It wasn't the story that mattered, but the telling of it, the saying more than what was said.

Turning a page she glanced up at her one-person audience. It was an old pain, the one that twisted her heart, but it hurt all the same. The boy he had once been was still bright in her mind's eye, she remembered him so clearly, what he was now hurt to see.

He had been a beautiful boy, a clever boy, a _good_ boy. Winky remembered, when he'd been little, so bright and cheerful and energetic, he'd inherited all of his father's talents and all of his mother's charm, since he'd been a toddler that'd been clear. His voice sparked with magic, words became his playthings before he'd even left the nursery, and he revelled in it, even as a child he'd had the soul of a poet and the swagger of a performer.

She remembered, one day, he would have been seven or so, Little Barty had memorised a passage from one of the stories she so often read to him — such feats had always come easy to him, a side-effect of his and Master Barty's gift with language. The noble hero giving his final, dramatic, inspirational speech, and even at seven he'd been so dynamic and brilliant. (Even that early, Winky had been certain he belonged on a stage somewhere, his natural gifts lent him to drama and theatre, she'd known him and loved him dearly for it.) And Mistress Kathy had smiled and laughed, praised and hugged him, told him what a special and clever boy he was, that she loved him so.

Master Barty had not.

His father hadn't an interest in or the patience for such things.

Winky couldn't blame him for this, not really. Ever since _he_ had been little, Master Barty had been very...focused. He hadn't the attention for poetry or the arts, these weren't concerns of his. And for Little Barty, well, he was a very busy man, he hadn't the time for such things, Master Barty hardly even saw him. No matter how much Little Barty tried to impress him, to show him how clever and poetic and powerful and _beautiful_ he was, no matter how much he tried to make his father see him, be proud of him, Master Barty never did. He hadn't the time for such things.

He hadn't said as much, but Winky didn't have to hear it. Someone had come to give Little Barty what his father hadn't. Who'd seen him and appreciated him for the talented, wonderful boy he was, had given him the appreciation and love his father never had. Someone _else_.

Master Barty was the one who'd started this whole mess. This was all his fault.

Not that Winky would ever say so aloud. She was a good elf.

Winky trailed off for a moment, her book sitting forgotten in her hands. Little Barty had gone thin and weak, no matter how she tried to care for him, he simply didn't _do_ enough, stuck here in this house. The light had gone out of his eyes, glazed and empty. She didn't even know if he heard her, when she read to him, but she _had_ to, she had to remember that beautiful, brilliant boy he'd been, even if she could hardly see him anymore, even if it hurt to look at him.

This wasn't her Barty anymore, not really. He was gone, replaced with this listless shell of a human being, all his poetry and all his cleverness and all his _life_ locked away. Master Barty had taken him away from her.

Sometimes, Winky hated him for it. She hated him so much.

She didn't want to — Winky was a _good_ elf — but she couldn't help it. And, sometimes, she wondered...

There was a tingle across the magic of the house, one Winky knew the shape of, intimately — the Master would be home soon. Winky folded her storybook closed, put it away. She lingered a moment, stroked her boy's hair, told him she'd be back soon, she'd be back.

He didn't respond. His eyes hardly twitched, he didn't even seem to notice she was there.

Master Barty told him to do nothing, and so he did.

(Winky felt she might cry.)

She popped up to the foyer even as Master Barty stepped out of the floo. By the time the first words were coming from his mouth, Winky was already levitating his cloak onto its hook, the soot already charmed away. "I swear," he grumbled, "this bloody World Cup business is far more trouble than it's worth. I can't imagine what that _nreshqal_ Bagman was thinking when he put in the bid, with his Department in the state it's in, he was simply _not_ prepared to organise an event of this scale. If I get a hint any of the sponsors paid him for their contracts, he'll be out on his arse by end of business. Mother Mercy save me from incompetent, corrupt toadies..."

Winky felt a scowl cross her face, a mirror of Master Barty's. She did not know much about this Bagman — she'd only seen him a small number of times, early during Britain's bid to host the World Cup — but she hadn't any doubts he was just as selfish and fumbling as Master Barty said he was. Say what one would about her master (and there was plenty to say), but he did know the Ministry, and the people who were unsuited to their work.

Master Barty let out a long sigh, eyes tipped to the ceiling. "Sometimes I wonder why I bother," he muttered, low, obviously speaking to himself. Then he turned to Winky, abruptly stern and deathly serious. "Everything quiet here?"

He'd asked that question, it seemed, every day for years now. (And she hated him for it, a little.) "Yes, Master Barty, all is being the same here."

"Good." He sighed, rubbing at his face for a moment. "I have a lot of reading to do tonight, and a report I need to write up for the P.M. — which is _not_ my bloody job, but Muggle Affairs is staffed with bumbling morons, every time I pass these things off they inevitably make it worse..."

She nodded. "If Master is not needing anything else, Winky will be starting on dinner now."

"Yes, Winky, thank you. I'll be in the study all night."

Winky popped away, started in on her work for the night.

It didn't have to be like this.

It was later, spooning soup into Little Barty's unresponsive mouth, that the thought came to her — again, as it had so often, unwillingly, she couldn't control it. It always hovered there, like a shadow, whispering at the edge of hearing. She could feel it at all times, a possibility worked into the texture of the Family Magic, a promise of what could be. It didn't have to be this way, she _could_—

It was often said that an elf could never act against her master, but this wasn't necessarily true. There were means a clever elf could exploit, to work around direct orders — which was necessary, because sometimes masters didn't know everything, sometimes they were confused or misguided, and elves had to think on their feet, to act in their family's interests whether it was in line with what they were expected to do or not. But, in some cases, when elves were bound to the magic of a family and not just a person, it was more complicated. Their loyalty was, at its heart, to the Family as a whole, not the person at the head of it.

The Family Magic was focused on one person, yes, that was so. The elves in the Family were expected to obey that one person, yes, that was so. But because it was expected did not necessarily mean it was. The Family Magic was meant to be one way, but it hadn't any will of its own, it didn't _have_ loyalty or the ability to choose, it simply was.

Elves could choose. Many didn't realise this, Winky herself hadn't known it either, until she'd heard the story of _that elf_.

Everyone knew about Cherri Black, now — even Winky, who didn't see other elves very often, even she had heard the rumours. The humans said Lyra Black was the secret child of Bellatrix Lestrange, but the elves knew this was not so. The Black elves insisted she had come from _elsewhere_, from _not this world_. That the gods, moved by Cherri's selfless devotion, had gifted her a new Lady, to save her Family from the brink of extinction.

But the House of Black had already had a Lord, and the Family Magics had still been centred around him. Until, it was said, there had come a moment when Cherri had been between them. Sirius had ordered her to do one thing, and Lyra had ordered her to do another. There was no doubt what Cherri had been expected to do — Sirius had been her master, and that was that. But that was _not_ that. When the moment had come, Cherri had chosen who she would obey, she had _chosen_.

Winky could _choose_.

But the thought terrified her.

It was not what was done, she was a _good_ elf, but it _hurt_ to see her beautiful boy like this, some days she couldn't _stand_ it, and it was all Master Barty's fault, and sometimes she hated him _so much_, and she hated herself a little bit for feeling and thinking this way (maybe more than a little), but she couldn't help thinking about it, sometimes it was so tempting — it didn't _need_ to be this way, she could _choose_, she _could_...

What Master Barty had done, enslaving his son with forbidden magics, it was wrong, it was _not to be done_. He'd betrayed the Family — oh, what would Master Cass say, if he could see his son now? This wasn't right, she hated it so much, sometimes she looked at Little Barty, so empty and lifeless, and she felt she might die, split apart from the heart out—

She could _choose_...

But she didn't choose, not really.

She was standing in front of her beautiful boy — all his brilliance and poetry gone, an empty shell — and she was crying, she hadn't noticed it starting, it just happened. And she rested her forehead against his, and her fingers were running through his hair, and she was _so sorry_, she told him, her voice shaky with tears, he'd been cursed into still emptiness for a decade now — this wasn't what his mother had wanted, when she'd begged Master Barty to get him out of Azkaban, no matter what it took, no, not this, never _this_ — and she was _so sorry_, because she'd failed him, she'd failed Mistress Kathy, and she was too weak and useless, she was a _bad elf_, and she was _so sorry_ she'd let it come to this, gone so long, she couldn't...

She hadn't meant to do it — at least, not consciously. It just happened.

The shimmering veins of will and power that tied her to the Family Magic, they shivered, echoing with her misery, her love for a boy now long gone, and they twitched, and they twisted...

...and they _tore_...

And she felt the Family Magic shredding in her wake, but she didn't care, she grasped at Little Barty with everything she had — instinctively, desperately. And then she felt him, the gentle pulsing of his soul warm against hers. But it wasn't right, no, there was something tying it down, chains of smoke and hatred, telling him to _stay_, to _do nothing_, and he obeyed because he had no choice, they surrounded him, not just on the outside but threading through him, and he couldn't move enough to pick at them himself, no, held too tightly.

Winky pushed against him — instinctively, desperately — the veins of will and power that tied her now to her beautiful boy flaring, channeling fire into his captive mind. It was some kind of spell, she knew, but she couldn't say what, she didn't even know what she was doing, exactly. She simply _did_ it, she _pushed_, she ripped at the curses enfeebling Little Barty, with everything she had.

As they crumbled under her fury and her love, all the strength went out of her legs, and she collapsed into Little Barty, shivering and sniffling. Dizzy and numb, so tired she could hardly move, she cried into her boy's chest.

And he _moved_. For the first time in what felt like forever, he _moved_.

His arms came up around her, weakly and shakily, and he hugged her against him, his chest heaving with unsteady breaths. His voice was all wrong, thin and hoarse and half-forgotten, but Winky didn't care, it was _his_ voice, it was _him_. "Thank you, Winky," he muttered, low and awestruck, the weight of what she'd done heavy on every syllable. (In Elvish, it'd been so long since she'd heard it, Master Barty hadn't spoken to her with it since he'd been a child.) "I don't know how... Thank you, I— Thank you, thank you, _thank you_..."

She knew what she'd done — that she'd broken the Family Magic (the stories about Cherri Black hadn't mentioned _that_ part), that she'd betrayed Master Barty, she'd, she...

She didn't care.

Her beautiful little boy was himself again, he was _alive_, and that was enough. That was _more_ than enough, that was _everything_.

Winky lay in her new master's arms, weak and exhausted but warm and soft. And she cried, she cried until there was nothing left in her at all and she drifted into sleep, but it was okay. It was _good_. Her Little Barty was back, and that was all that mattered.

Everything would be okay.

* * *

"Hey, Walburga, I don't suppose you've seen a house elf around here, pretending it doesn't exist."

The portrait of Lyra's late aunt hung in the entryway of her former home scowled at her. It was, she thought, her lips twisting into an involuntary smirk, a reasonably good likeness.

"Don't speak to me, imposter!" it snapped.

Lyra rolled her eyes at it. "I don't know who you _think_ I am, but—"

"Line thief!" the thing shrieked. "I don't think it, I _know_ it! You're nothing but a mudblooded squib-spawned _liar_! Marius was disowned! _Disowned_! You're _nobody_, you—"

_Right_, she amended her previous assessment, it was a good likeness _physically_, but old Wally must have been a complete _bitch_ to the artist, because the personality was a downright _parody_ of the witch Lyra had known. Honestly, she might have had a sharp tongue and very _definite_ opinions, but compared to...pretty much anyone in the family (aside from Auntie Dorea), she was positively _nice_. Actually cared about her kids, practically doted on them. Sirius _hated_ her, of course, but Lyra wasn't at _all_ surprised that Bella had arranged for her to foster Narcissa when Andromeda left for Hogwarts.

"Oh, for fuck's sake," she muttered. Apparently the elf-who-did-not-exist had been reading the papers to his late mistress's portrait. She silenced the stupid thing — her usual jinx wouldn't work, of course, that spell required a physical body to affect, and the painting's speech was basically just an animated illusion. A really complex one, portraiture was actually a _fascinating_ subject (though she didn't really have the artistic ability to make it worth studying), but still just magic. And if anything, complex spells were easier to interrupt than simple ones.

When the portrait realised that it could no longer hear _itself_ speaking, it grew even _more_ furious, becoming increasingly red in the face as it railed at her silently, which was...kind of amusing, actually. But Lyra did have other things to do today.

"I'm not an imposter. I'm not actually _impersonating _anyone, for one thing, and I _am_ a legitimate Black. I would arguably have a better claim on the House than Sirius even if he _wasn't_ disinherited. I mean, not that I actually _wanted_ to be the Head of the House, but I _was_ older, and the House Magic fucking _loved_ me, so." She shrugged. "Not that it really _matters_, there's only three of us at the moment. So you have Sirius, the son who broke the Family Magic just to spite you and the rest of the House, proud blood traitor and, well...he's not actually a bad candidate to lead the Family, just doesn't want to admit he'd be good at it."

Actually, Lyra had given the subject some consideration over the past few months, and she was kind of starting to think that having Sirius acting as the public Head of the Family was actually a _great_ idea. If the Dark _wasn't_ guaranteeing the continued existence of the House, it would probably pay to have someone in charge of their social relationships who _wasn't_ dedicated to the Dark — and therefore inclined on some level, often one not very far away from the surface, to fuck up and/or destroy everything they touched. She hadn't told him, yet, but she was _kind of_ thinking that if they were really clever about this, they might be able to restore the House to a degree of power and influence they hadn't seen since _Henry _had died. But he _really_ wasn't suited to carry on the traditions of the House as far as its _magic_ was concerned. If anyone was going to rebuild the Family Magic and retain _any_ sort of continuity with their legacy, it wasn't him.

"Or you have Bella, who's recovering in a fucking veela colony after overcoming the childhood compulsions pressed on her by one Thom de Mort — Riddle, actually, he's not even a pureblood — re-evaluating literally her entire life, and escaping the custody of the Unspeakables."

Bella was... Well, Lyra was kind of annoyed with her, honestly. Granted, she'd never spoken to her directly, but she _apparently_ had decided that Riddle hadn't done anything particularly _wrong_, turning her into his mind slave, which was just _insane_ — and Lyra didn't use that term _nearly _as lightly as every other fucking person she'd ever met. (Of _course_ he'd done something _wrong_, corrupting her very _mind_ to make her believe she _wanted_ to do whatever _he_ wanted her to do, it made Lyra feel vaguely ill just thinking about it. Eris said the compulsions were gone, but some of the effect he'd had on her personality had _obviously_ been retained.) And even if there wasn't still something off about her, Bella couldn't realistically be the Head of the House, anyway. She might be the most _competent_ of the three of them when it came to actually acting as the head of a political organisation like a House, negotiating with outsiders and whatnot, but she _was_ kind of wanted for war crimes, after all. And slaughtering twenty-odd people while making her escape. And generally being terrifying. Not necessarily disqualifying features from the perspective of the House, but she _was _basically public enemy number one, or would be, if the establishment weren't insisting against all reason that she was dead.

"Or you have _me_. Lyra Bellatrix, presumed daughter of Bellatrix Druella. Formerly Bellatrix Druella, daughter of Cygnus and Druella. Not _your_ Cygnus," she added, as the portrait, which had begun to calm down, returned to its silent tirade. "I was born in Nineteen Fifty in a timeline which diverged from this one sometime in the Nineteen-Twenties or Thirties. You remember Bella when she was thirteen, right?" she asked, no longer speaking to the portrait. "Do you honestly think it implausible that she — _I_ — could have become a demonic time-traveller at that age? Not that it _matters_. Should it become necessary, a blood test _will_ reveal my true parentage. The only _reasonable _explanation, of course, being that Bellatrix created a clone of herself through bioalchemy and had it raised as a proper heir to the House.

"That's the most _recent_ cover story, by the way. I'm surprised _anyone_ believed I could _actually _have been Marius's granddaughter. I'm _shockingly_ bad at pretending to be muggleborn, you know. I mean, I _was_ raised to be the Heir for six fucking years, and even after Arcturus decided that Sirius was a more attractive alternative, given, you know, _not_ being dedicated to Chaos and therefore effectively exempt from his authority, I was still the First Daughter. It's not like I didn't have a proper education. And it's _surprisingly _difficult to pretend not to know things.

"For example, I know you're listening to me, Kreacher. I know Cherri came to see you, and you told her I couldn't possibly be real, couldn't possibly have come to save the House from destruction. Which, to be fair, that's _not_ why I came — I _meant_ to start a war, back in the Thirties. _My_ Thirties. Long story. But that doesn't mean I'm not _exactly _who she says I am. And it _certainly _doesn't mean I'm not going to revive the House, now that I'm here. _I swore it before the Dark Itself_," she added, switching to Elvish. "_Covenant or no Covenant, we shall _not _fall._ "

There might only be three of them left. Sirius might have shattered the Family Magic and Cherri destroyed the broken pieces by choosing to obey Lyra over Sirius. But it would take a _hell_ of a lot more than _that_ to finish off the House of Black. Last year at this time, two of them had been in Azkaban (and Lyra hadn't even been in this universe), they'd had no political capital at all, and the Family Magic was failing because Bella had married out of the Family, and Sirius had forsaken it. There effectively hadn't _been_ any Blacks. But the House of Black had a history of transforming what appeared to be utter defeat into absolutely _devastating_ victories. The last time they'd been _this_ close to dying out, Mela and Onyx had dedicated the entire bloodline to the Dark, positioning their descendants to not only reclaim their previous stature in society, wiping out the houses which had pushed them to the brink of extinction in the process, but to reach heights of power and influence that those who came _before_ could hardly have imagined.

Sirius might be the Lord, recognised by the other Houses as the one who spoke for the Blacks — or he would be, once his bloody trial concluded — but if he was the _head_ of the House, Lyra was its heart. Even before she'd made her dedication, she had embodied what it _meant_ to be a Black in a way no one had in decades, if not _centuries_ — passionate, irrepressible, and given to extremes (a half-mad little hellion with more curiosity than sense, as Arcturus used to put it) — and the Family Magic had loved her for it. She'd known that as long as she could remember, didn't even remember learning it. If she said they were making a come-back, they were making a come-back, damn it. And anyone who thought otherwise could kiss her fucking arse, up to and including the thrice-cursed Dark Itself. (She'd gotten the impression at Yule that the Dark actually _approved_ of that attitude, so she was just running with it.)

"_Regulus is dead, Kreacher. But the House is not. I am your rightful Mistress, and if you are still a Black elf, you _will _reveal yourself to me. _Now."

"Kreacher is still a Black elf," an aged elf croaked, creeping out of the cupboard beneath the staircase behind her. That... That was the same Kreacher who'd been here back in the Sixties, and he had been old then, which made him positively _ancient_ now. Huh. Lyra was kind of surprised the shock of the Family Magic failing hadn't killed him. "And Missy _is_ speaking elf-tongue like Mistress Bella — Miss Dru and Mistress Walburga would be _so_ displeased."

Lyra couldn't help but smirk at the half-suppressed grumbling. He wasn't _wrong_, and his English _was_ rather good for an elf, but... "Yes, well, I can't say I've ever really _cared_ what Dru or Wally thought of my behavior. Standing order: unless I temporarily countermand this order, you are to address me _only _in _Elvish_. Even if there are other humans present. Even if Sirius tells you only to speak English. He may be the legal representative of the House in the outside world, but _I_ am your Mistress. Understood?"

"But Missy is not Kreacher's Mistress," the elf objected, proving his point by doing so in English. "She is _not_. Kreacher has no Master because Kreacher is a _bad_ elf!"

"No, you have no Master because Sirius and Cherri broke the family magic. You haven't been cut off or cast out. One of the reasons I'm here is to re-bind you. I mean, it'll have to be to the wards of this property until I figure out how to fix the Family Magic — kind of like the public wards at the Ministry. But I _am _your Mistress.

"Cherri's the new Chief Elf of the House. We've recalled the surviving Black elves. You make thirteen, all bound to different properties — aside from Cherri, who is bound to me. You will be free to act as you please beyond keeping this place up. Which you _will_ do, once you can use your magic again," she added, shooting a dusty, cobweb-filled corner a pointed look. The elf squirmed. "Cherri's establishing a warren at Ancient House, but you're not required to join her there if you prefer your solitude. Fuck, you can keep pretending you don't exist to everyone but me and Cherri, if you like, though I do want to know _why_."

That was actually the larger part of why she was here, she didn't really _care_ if Kreacher wanted to mope around unbound and risk exploding whilst trying to make a cup of tea, but she _was_ curious. She did kind of want this place fixed up again — if they were going to do political shite, inviting their allies to Meda's offices or the Glass Octopus to discuss strategy just wouldn't do — but she could always bring in another elf to do that, if the resident one was being uncooperative. (Though if he was so determined to remain loyal to the dead before the living, she might just put him out of everyone's misery first.)

"Kreacher is failing Master Regulus! Kreacher is a bad elf, and he is failing in Master Regulus's final order, but Kreacher was ordered to hide and he does. He—"

She cut him off with the usual silencing jinx. "I really _must_ insist that you speak _Elvish_," she informed him, holding him at wand-point until he dropped his defiant glare. "Good. Continue."

The elf sniffled. "_Yes, Mistress. And I am sorry for refusing Cherri's call, so sorry, I am the worst elf, the worst of _all _elves. But Master Regulus ordered me to hide, that no human might know I still lived, and– and..._" It broke off, sobbing and throwing itself to the floor at Lyra's feet. She grimaced. At least it wasn't doing the obnoxiously obsequious thing some elves seemed to think was appropriate whenever they approached their Master, but crying wasn't _that_ much better.

"Kreacher, control yourself."

The wretched thing choked back another sob, returned to intermittent sniffles. "_But I failed him! I failed Master Regulus! I _tried_, Mistress, I did, but...but I couldn't do it! I couldn't— Master Regulus died to take the necklace, to destroy it — and– and my Master ordered me to finish the job for him — to make him drink the evil potion and take the necklace and destroy it — and I couldn't! I tried, but— It was the last thing Master Regulus asked of me, and I _failed_, Mistress! Master Regulus was so good to me, to all of us, not like his brother — he ordered me to return to him after I did as the Dark Lord required of me — he saved me, healed me — and he drank the potion himself that night instead of making me drink it again — I begged him not to, to let me do it, but he would not. And he– he _died_, Mistress! I watched him go, dead hands dragging him down, but– but he had ordered me to take the necklace and destroy it and not let any human know I yet lived. And so I did. But I _failed_, Mistress! I failed him!_"

Right. Lyra was definitely going to need the elf to explain that again, from the beginning. But first... "You left him to die and pretended not to exist, as ordered, so how did you fail him, exactly?"

"_The necklace! Master Regulus's necklace! The _Dark Lord's _necklace! I was ordered to destroy it, and I _couldn't_. I _tried_, Mistress, but— No matter what I did to it, it would not break. It would not melt. It would not be unmade! And so I failed him!_"

"What necklace? If you couldn't destroy it, I suppose you still have it?" The elf nodded. "Bring it to me."

The elf doddered away down the corridor, toward the kitchen, before abruptly vanishing off toward... What was even down that way? Bedrooms and sitting rooms mostly, she thought. She sighed. Might as well follow and have the remainder of this conversation in a more comfortable location. Not to mention, if the thing was squirreled away deep in the maze of expanded rooms and extended corridors that was Grimmauld Place, it might take quite a while for the elf to get to it without magic.

As it turned out, it wasn't. The ancient elf led her up a back staircase to a drawing room on the first floor — the one with Great Aunt Belvina's family tree tapestry on the wall (though that old thing was starting to look a bit worse for wear, damaged by years of exposure to moths and doxies) — muttering very pointedly about Mistresses who insisted on watching their servants' every move and how there _were_ human-sized staircases, did Mistress actually think herself an elf, to be following Kreacher into elf-spaces like the servants' stairs.

She snorted at that, more amused than she probably should be. "_No, Zinnie and Lil spent the better part of Nineteen Fifty-Three disabusing me of that notion._ You may address your criticisms of me directly in private, and will refrain from doing so even obliquely in front of other humans, regardless of whether I'm there or not."

The elf glared at her. "_I am not such a bad elf that I would insult my Mistress behind her back! Though...Mistress earlier referred to the blood traitor Sirius Orion..._"

"Oh, go ahead and insult Sirius all you like. Can't promise he won't try to hex you for it, but." She shrugged. Kreacher _was_ a Black elf, and he'd been around for _decades_. If no one had ever hexed him in immediate punishment for some minor indiscretion, she'd be shocked. After all, _she'd_ been hexed for minor indiscretions all the bloody time, and even Cygnus had treated her better than an _actual_ elf.

"_Thank you, Mistress_." The elf approached a curio cabinet at the far end of the room — kicking a solid wooden chest which rattled at him as he passed with a slightly ashamed glance back at her. "_Boggart. I will get rid of it as soon as possible, Mistress_."

"Oh, no, leave it for now. I might know someone who could use it." She'd honestly lost track of which members of her circle were learning occlumency, but Blaise and Harry would know, and chances were at least one of them was at the level to start practicing against a boggart by now. "Is that it?"

The elf had pulled a heavy golden locket from the cabinet. It looked slightly out of place alongside a collection of silver snuff boxes and pyxides, antique potions ingredient gathering equipment, and knives in elaborate (now tarnished) sheathes, but the magic of the knives (every one of them cursed) _had_ masked its aura, she supposed. It wasn't until Kreacher brought it to her, holding it at arm's length, glaring at it as though it was personally responsible for Regulus's death, that she realised exactly how powerful the enchantments on it were. There was an intricate 'S' carved in relief on the front, tiny alchemical emeralds (too perfect to be natural) set into the elaborately engraved neo-Corinthian florets that formed the background of the piece, which was about half the size of Lyra's palm, and...very familiar.

In her own universe, this thing was on display in the Slytherin House library, a fourteenth-century heirloom of the family. Professor Riddle claimed he had found it at fucking _Borgin and Burke's_ back in the early Fifties. He'd donated it to the school when he took up the Defense position. (He was curiously silent on the matter of how he managed to convince old Burke to give it up, given Lyra was _pretty sure_ Riddle had never _seen_ the kind of money he would've wanted for it.)

In _this_ universe... Now that it was in her hand, away from the cursed knives, she could feel the power trapped in the thing. It was _strong_, but it wasn't particularly _dark_. Yes, it had clearly been _created_ with dark magic — _black_ magic, even — but the power contained within it, seeping out of it and attempting to find a way through her defenses, wasn't _that_ dark. It wasn't quite the same _kind_ of dark as Lyra's own magic (more _dominating_ than _chaotic_), so it was still _noticeable_, but like...Professor Riddle dark, not like _Angel Black_ dark. And the enchantments on the thing, mostly protective, were almost _light_, the interaction between them and the traces of destructive darkness left over from its creation causing the thing to almost _pulse_ with subtle oscillating interference. Not enough to actually destabilise it or render the protections ineffective, obviously, if Kreacher hadn't been able to destroy it, but enough to make it feel alive, _dynamic_.

Was this... _Did Riddle make the Slytherin Locket into a fucking horcrux?_

She meant, it was a _bit_ of a leap, but she was pretty sure Kreacher had referred to it as the Dark Lord's at one point, and she _knew_ Riddle had had it in her own universe, and that sense of dynamic _aliveness_, she'd _never_ felt anything quite like that before, and the magic it (kind of) contained _did_ remind her of Professor Riddle...

_Yes, he did,_ Eris admitted, hatred burning behind the thought. _Disgusting thing. We should burn it._

_Eris...we talked about this._ Way back when they'd first found out that Not-Professor Riddle had used multiple horcruxes to anchor himself to this plane, they'd decided that if they could get their hands on one, the thing to do would be to use it to track down the others, and maybe the Riddle Wraith as well. As far as Lyra knew, that was still the plan. Eris just _really_ hated Not-Professor Riddle. _Besides,_ she added, on a sudden realisation_, it's a _locket_, there could be something _inside _it. Other than the horcrux, I mean._ Of course, the artefact _did _have some intrinsic historical value too, but presumably everyone thought it was already lost to history in this timeline, so it wasn't like anyone would be overly vexed about her destroying it.

_We should still burn it. Evil, manipulative bastard. There are others. We don't have to use _this _one to find him._

_No. I want to see what's inside. And it's probably warded against fire, anyway._ The Professor Riddle she'd known wouldn't have entrusted his soul anchors to anything that could be so easily destroyed, at least. And there _were_ wards against fiendfire and phoenix fire and all _sorts_ of magical damage.

_Well then it wouldn't hurt to try, would it?_

_I'm sure Kreacher already did._ "You tried burning it, right?"

Kreacher nodded, face twisted into an overexaggerated mask of misery. "_All manner of fires. Even _dragon _fire could not touch it. I tried crushing it, and dissolving it in alchemists' waters, and unmaking it with magic, but _nothing worked_, I _failed_, Mistress! Master Regulus asked this one final thing of me, and I could not give it to him. I could not destroy this– this _thing_, I could not even break it open!_"

"Not through any fault of your own. If I had to _guess_, since he clearly didn't engrave anything on the outside, he probably put the scripts for the warding on the _inside_, making it fucking impenatrable once he closed it."

The elf nodded again. "_I am certain it must be opened to destroy it, but I could not!_"

Lyra shrugged, wandering over to the shelf and inspecting the pyxides. Ah, that one would do. She plucked it off the shelf and turned out the contents — an _unusually_ large black pearl, its surface covered with gold-inlaid geometric designs (which _was_ neat, she'd have to try to figure out what that was meant to do, especially since someone had apparently thought it ought to be kept in a jar spelled to prevent the detection of any magic within it) — and dropped the locket in before shoving it into a shadow pocket.

"Yes, well, it's not your problem anymore."

Kreacher gaped at her, horrified. "_But— Mistress, I _must_, Master Regulus _ordered _me to— I cannot— Please, I know I can do it! Give it— Please, allow this worthless creature one last chance to—_"

"_No_." The elf flinched, cowering. "I'm relieving you of the obligation. I will destroy it myself when I'm done with it."

"_But...but..._"

"My decision is final, Kreacher."

The elf swallowed hard before looking up to meet her eyes, clearly terrified to say what he was about to say, but determined to do so all the same. "_Promise it, Mistress_," he demanded. (Well, _begged_ — elves didn't _demand_ things, not with any sense of expectation that they would be obeyed.) "_Promise that you will fulfill Master Regulus's final order, to destroy the evil necklace._"

Lyra gave the elf a small smile. Unlike (most) humans, house elves took promises _very_ seriously. (Almost as seriously as gods.) That was, in a way, the core principle of elven magic, making a statement to the universe about how things _would be_. She _would_ call it ironic, because elves weren't really that strong-willed about anything _other_ than magic, but the way they just gave themselves over to the _becoming_ of that state, doing everything in their power to make it so with no thought for themselves, was _very_ elf-like. (And also, she was fairly certain, the reason unbound elves were so likely to blow themselves up, channelling too much magic for their physical bodies to handle.)

"_I take on this obligation in your stead. Your master's final command will be fulfilled. I will destroy the evil necklace when I have learned what I wish to know of it. It _shall be so_,_" she swore.

The ancient elf's eyes grew large, ears flattening in shock. It wasn't every day one heard a human make a promise to an elf, but she _seriously _doubted Kreacher had ever even heard _of_ a human making a vow _in Elvish_. Not about anything important, at least. (She probably _had_ made little promises to Zinnie and Lil before her dedication, when she was still in the nursery, but she'd been a child, they would hardly have been anything of note.) Granted, her vow didn't have quite the same magical significance as that of an elf, but making the promise in _Elvish_ did at least make it clear that she knew the importance of her words. If Kreacher _did_ end up joining the warren at Ancient House, the story of this moment would probably become as legendary as Cherri's account of Lyra's appearance in this universe. She smirked, even as the elf managed a silent nod.

"Oh, come on, we both know how much human promises count for, _no_?" That earned her a positively _scandalised_ look, but they both knew humans had a certain reputation when it came to following through on their word — history was _full_ of humans lying and making deals in bad faith and double-crossing each other. "So, what say we get you properly bound to the wards, and then you tell me _exactly_ what happened to Regulus, from the beginning." It wasn't as though she'd come here today _looking_ for a horcrux, after all.

The elf nodded again, more eagerly this time. "_Yes, Mistress_."

"Good. Now, let's see..."

* * *

_Woo, we're back. With more elf-centric silliness, because why not. —Lysandra_

_These three scenes take place before the vast majority of the summer scenes. The first and second actually happen before the end of the school year (around Easter and mid-June, respectively). The third would be a week or two into the summer holiday. —Leigha_

_Next chapter before too long. Hopefully. We'll see. (Waiting a scene of mine, but I'm trying to finish the chapter of Echoes I'm on, goddamn thing just keeps going and going and bluuuuhhhhh) —Lysandra_


	2. Surprisingly Fragile

Crossing the glittering white granite of the Wizengamot floor, Bríd Ingham slowed to a stop looming over the Longbottom seat. "You ready?"

Lady Augusta glanced up from the papers neatly arranged across her desk. Her pale eyes met Bríd's, and for a moment the last two decades seemed to melt away, the weight of tragedy lifting from her, once again the powerful witch she'd been when Bríd had been a child. She didn't express her obvious excitement, though, instead growling, "Worry more about your own people, girl."

Bríd felt her lips pull into a smirk. "Yes, yes, you know what you're doing, I know. Just thought I'd check in before the party gets started."

"Yes, well." Apparently absent anything to say, Augusta's eyes dipped down for a moment — and then she scowled with a sort of exhausted disapproval. Bríd didn't think she'd ever worn the billowy robes the Brits liked so much even once in her entire life, she tended to show up to Wizengamot meetings in a formal dueling kit (usually in Saoirse Ghaelach's colours, not that many of these idiots seemed to notice that little detail). The lords and ladies of older generations didn't bother trying to hide they thought she had no class at all, but Augusta had known her long enough by now to know pointing it out wouldn't accomplish anything. "I'm sure there are last-minute discussions you could be having."

She lifted her shoulders in a lazy shrug. "Nah, Ciara's handling our people. She's more convincing, you know. But fine, I can leave you alone." With a quick little bow — only _slightly_ sarcastic — Bríd turned away again.

From the Ingham seat, the Wizengamot Hall was a bustling hive of noise and chaos, as it was in the last few minutes before any session. A huge theater of benches and desks in concentric rings, the Hall itself was made of pure white stone, bits of quartz embedded within scintillating in the sunlight pouring through the enchanted ceiling overhead, at times the glare enough it almost hurt. Luckily, it was broken here and there with the seats all around, cast in a whole variety of styles and colours as designed by the first of the family to join the assembly, or else some heir down the line. Her own seat was a plain wooden desk with a wide banner hanging from the front, a golden sun rising over a green field — she knew the symbol was _very_ old, but she honestly didn't know if had originally been meant to refer to Freyr or _na Fianna_, though she guessed it didn't really matter — but many were more colourful and far more elaborate.

It looked like the seats were filling up, though the circle surrounding the empty floor in the middle was still mostly empty — it would remain so, Bríd could hardly expect anything else. In an odd exercise of nationalism, the seats of the Seventeen Founders had been left at the centre untouched, even though most of the Noble and Most Ancient Houses were defunct in the modern day. There was her own family, of course, then the Monroes right next to her (empty at the moment, Ciara was probably twisting a final few arms); the Longbottoms about a third the way around the circle was occupied; Lady Susan was still rather young to participate, so the Bones seat sat empty; Lord Sirius was still technically a fugitive and Lyra inactive, so no Black; and the rest, the Maddychs and the Gaunts and the Slytherins and the Cadwaladers and the Langleys and so forth, they'd all been abandoned centuries ago, and yet they sat, kept clean and polished over the long years, waiting.

Which Bríd had always thought was very strange — it seemed a bit...morbid, to her, but what did she know. Brits were strange people sometimes, no use dwelling over it.

Aides and messengers were still dancing back and forth between the seats, like an anthill overturned, but the activity seemed to be slowing down, cousins and vassals gradually trickling away, leaving the lords and ladies in their shimmering robes and twinkling jewelry arrayed alone. Just as the Wizengamot was called to attention with a slow series of heavy thumps, the stone floor vibrating like the skin of an enormous drum, Ciara appeared in her peripheral vision, collapsing into her seat. "Cutting it rather close, don't you think."

The older woman — at sixty-two, she wasn't exactly over the hill by magical standards, but still nearly twice Bríd's age, never let her forget it either — puffed for a moment, straightening her darkly glimmering formal robes and shooting Bríd a level glare. "Erin and Tugwood took a bit more hand-holding than I thought. They're not happy about working with Death Eaters, you know."

Well, no, Bríd couldn't imagine they were — she wasn't entirely pleased about it either, to be honest. At least Erin Scrimgeour hadn't actually lost any family to the latest British Dark Lord and his murderous lackies, the same couldn't be said of everyone in Ars Publica. In any ordinary circumstances, or if they were being lead by virtually anyone else, Bríd doubted she would have ever considered it. Even if she had, her grandmother certainly wouldn't have signed off on it, it'd been a struggle to get her to agree as it was.

Unconsciously, she looked over her shoulder to her left, finding Lady Malfoy, sitting surrounded halfway up the stands by the rest of her so-called Allied Dark. She still didn't know how she felt about this. Narcissa might be a Black by birth, but she acted so very...well, _British_. Not that the Blacks had ever been anything other than Brits — they certainly weren't Gaels, anyway — but they'd been with them, once, theirs had been an important voice in Ars Publica for centuries. But that was so very long ago now, it seemed.

According to Grandmother, the Blacks had once been the most dependable of their allies, unwaveringly aligned with the Dark in a way most others weren't, but they hadn't been able to really count on the Blacks since her time, when Phineas Nigellus had still been around. They weren't any less dark in the magical sense, but they'd...drifted over the last decades, politically. So many of them had gotten wrapped up in petty blood purity, high society nonsense, too many getting drawn into the Dark Lord's orbit, and the war had eaten their family down to the bone. Most people Bríd had spoken to had been convinced it had ended them, before this Lyra had shown up, before Sirius had been proven innocent.

(Of course, Bríd had never really believed Sirius had supported the Dark Lord, but that wasn't important right now.)

Which was part of what made Narcissa so...complicated. On the one hand, she was a Black, so she had their families' historical achievements and alliances to lean into. (She _was_ an obvious bastard, wasn't a Black by blood, but she'd been educated by them and raised within their Family Magics, so it didn't really matter.) But on the other hand, the things that distinguished her from Blacks generations back were exactly the things that made her more difficult to trust. Blacks started at a handicap in that regard — that was a natural consequence of dedicating an _entire bloodline_ to the Dark, fucking madmen — but they'd been consistent allies of Ars Public for its entire existence. They'd been one of the founders of their faction, in fact, it wasn't a stretch to suggest Melisende the Black, and later figures like Gwenfrewi of Aberdyfi and Chief Warlock Henry Black, were influential in the development of the ideological underpinnings of their politics.

But joining a maniac Dark Lord? _especially_ one deeply rooted in British pureblood supremacy? That was _not_ a very House of Black thing to do. Historically, Blacks tended to recognise no outside authority over them. Which, Bríd would be a hypocrite to have a problem with that — the Dark political tradition had a long history of opposing the imposition of power from various kingdoms over the years all the way up to the modern Ministry — but it did make them very reliable in a way. Hell, two of the most famous Blacks to ever live had _led the fight_ against the two most successful Dark Lords in Celtic history, Gwenfrewi of Aberdyfi against Ignatius Gaunt and Henry against Cromwell. They'd literally _laid down their lives_ on the principle that _Dark Lords were bad_.

Okay, saying it was a matter of principle might be giving Henry too much credit — Cromwell had been actively trying to depose him as Chief Warlock — _but still_.

The point was, Bríd was absolutely _certain_ Narcissa was not allying with them as a matter of principle. She didn't know the younger woman well, but she didn't doubt she was in this for one reason and one reason only: the preservation of her (and her family's) wealth and power. Her Dark Lord had failed, and with Dumbledore's reputation tarnished the Light had descended into petty infighting, so she saw aligning with the Dark and Common Fate as the best way to maintain some level of influence. It really was as simple as that.

Bríd should be glad — taken together with their alliance and Augusta's people, Narcissa's so-called Allied Dark gave them a controlling majority of the Wizengamot. But she didn't trust these people. She didn't trust Narcissa and she didn't trust most of her faction, sleazy criminals and bigots all, some even outright murderers. She and Ciara would exploit this opportunity while it lasted, but she didn't expect their alliance to hold very long. Such arrangements with pureblood supremacists never did.

Thankfully. Allying with British pureblood supremacists even for something as crucial as replacing the Chief Warlock left a bad taste in her mouth — she doubted she could stomach it in the long term anyway.

While Bríd had been watching Narcissa, the assembly had been called to order, Amelia casually sweeping up to the lectern. It had taken some convincing to get Amelia to preside while Dumbledore was suspended anticipating a formal vote to remove him — it was standard procedure for the Director of the DLE to stand in when the Chief Warlock was unable to for whatever reason, but Amelia had an almost pathological distaste for politics. However, if she _didn't_ preside, it would pass to either Crouch or Diggory — Crouch by the proper order of succession, but Crouch was a commoner and Diggory had seniority, so Diggory probably would have been pushed in over Crouch's head — and Amelia hated both men with an almost intimidating passion, the threat of either one ending up in charge of the vote to oust and replace the Chief Warlock had been enough to get her to play along.

So she was speeding through the opening business of the session with all due haste. It was hardly a few minutes, a few quick motions and one short floor vote, before the matter of the expulsion of the Chief Warlock was taken up. A couple people made brief statements, rehashing the arguments for and against Dumbledore being removed from office, all of which everyone had already heard a hundred times — they had been discussing this for a while now, after all. Before too long, with little fanfare and no apparent recognition of the historical weight of the moment, Amelia started the vote.

The vote had already been set to be done as a sequential vocal assent when the motion had originally been made. Once upon a time, the vote was ordered by seniority — the Seventeen Founders first, alphabetically, then down the list in order of the family's admittance into the Wizengamot. For the last couple hundred years, though, the traditional order had been abandoned, replaced by a simple alphabetical one. Except the Founders, who still went first.

So, funnily enough, the first two votes were abstentions. Though the house technically wasn't defunct yet, the Black seat was still vacant, so no vote there. While Amelia, proxy for her underage niece, did have the right to cast a vote, she'd decided not to, claiming she felt it was improper for the presiding officer to explicitly express support for one side or the other. That was sort of ridiculous, since Dumbledore did that _all the time_, and it meant they would be one vote short of where they should be, Ciara and Augusta had had no success in convincing Amelia to change her mind.

Bríd did respect Amelia's conviction, no matter how terribly inconvenient it could be at times.

Next down the list was Bríd herself — _aye_. Then came Augusta, with another _aye_. There was a bit of muttering across the floor, Dumbledore's Light whispering to each other, in reaction to Augusta's vote. Bríd could almost see why it would be a surprise to some people, but it really shouldn't have been. Yes, the Longbottoms were a culturally light family, and had shown largely consistent support for Dumbledore in the past — most notably, Augusta's son and daughter-in-law had been involved in that ridiculous Order of his — but Augusta was influential in Common Fate, and always had been. Her support of Dumbledore had always been limited to particular issues, and contingent on him not angering her too much or there being better alternatives. Ars Publica had presented her with a better alternative.

If that had been the biggest surprise of the vote, they would have been in the clear. Unfortunately, things quickly started getting very weird.

Abbott: _aye_ — not a surprise there, they were a light family but closely tied to Common Fate. Ainsley: _aye_ — that was...odd. Lord Ainsley was _definitely_ Light, there was no doubt about that, he shouldn't be voting to expel his own Chief Warlock. Atwell: _nay_ — as expected. Bellchant, _nay_; Bletchley, _aye_; Boot..._aye_? _What_? That was...odd, but alright. Then Brown came up, there was no doubt which way he would vote, and after him—

"Aye."

A storm of whispering and muttering swept over the chamber, Lord Brown casually sinking back into his chair as though he _hadn't_ just done something completely absurd. Brown was with Ars Brittania, one of the noisier members — Dumbledore and Ars Brittania didn't agree on a whole lot, but they did like him just on principle. As neutral as his politics might actually be, Dumbledore _claimed_ to be strongly Light (more culturally than ideologically, but Bríd wasn't certain Dumbledore even realised there was a difference), which did a whole lot of good for the public dissemination of Ars Brittania's rhetoric, even if few of their policy proposals actually got anywhere. It was _not_ to their advantage to get rid of him.

What the _fuck_ was going on?

Before long, Amelia got things rolling again — Bulstrode: _aye_; Burke: _aye_; Carmichael—

_Aye_?! _What?!_ And Carpenter immediately after him, no, this wasn't right, something had gone very _seriously_ wrong...

It made no sense for the Light and Ars Brittania to vote against Dumbledore. They _had_ to know Ars Publica, Common Fate, and the Allied Dark between them had the votes to force the confirmation of the next Chief Warlock without them. They _had_ to know whoever they nominated would be worse for their interests. Dumbledore wasn't a great representative for the Light — ideologically, his principles were much more in line with Common Fate, though by everything he did and said he apparently hadn't noticed that — but he was certainly better than anyone the Dark would pick. But if they were voting against him...

They knew something Bríd didn't. Something was wrong.

As Amelia called for Cornfoot to vote (_aye_, except he was _supposed_ to be a _nay_, what the fuck), Bríd leaned along her desk toward Ciara. "Something's wrong, we have to kill the vote."

"I know." Ciara had obviously figured it out herself — she was writing a note, presumably telling their people to flip. Once it was finished (Crabbe: _aye_), she whipped out her wand and duplicated it a few dozen times, a volley of charms folding the things and sending them zipping through the air to their allies. Ciara wasn't the only one either, notes were passing back and forth all over the place, the air thick with bits of parchment and paper and even flickering green messenger charms, a low rustle of muttered conversation forming an anxious background to the proceeding vote.

Davis: _aye_; Diggory: _aye_; Dunbar: _nay_; Eirsley: _aye_ — _dammit_, note must have gotten to him too slow, come on, come _on_ — Fawley: _aye_; Flint: _nay_; Gamp: _nay_.

Bríd let out a short breath at two of their alliance flipping in a row, they must have gotten the message. As the vote went on, she kept a tally in her head, biting her lip, her leg anxiously jiggling under her desk. It was going to be close. It was going to be _very_ close.

Especially since several of the Allied Dark didn't follow along, voted up as they'd originally planned...but Bríd wasn't certainly whether that actually meant anything. Narcissa had flipped — she was clever enough to figure _something_ was going on, Bríd had spotted her sending out her own notes around the same time as Ciara — but a few of her people hadn't. It was a little too complicated of a situation to know if this was _actually_ a betrayal or not. Perhaps, despite the unexpected turn in the vote, these few simply couldn't bring themselves to vote in support of Dumbledore — they did rather hate the man, after all. Perhaps they assumed Dumbledore had fucked up so badly he'd managed to alienated his closest supporters, which _was_ possible, if rather unlikely.

Or perhaps they knew something. Perhaps they were in on it.

Bríd remembered, from the politics lessons her grandmother had insisted she undergo before taking up the seat, that not all of the Allied Dark were families with a long history in the Dark. It wasn't that long ago, only a few generations, that some of them had been Light.

And not only Light — several of them had once been prominent members of Ars Brittania. It didn't get more Light than that. In a way, what the Death Eaters were to the Dark, Ars Brittania was to the Light. Firm and uncompromising, fervent humanocentrists, they were the radical fringe, varying from generation to generation and within themselves from mostly harmless nationalists to zealous ideologues to opportunistic demagogues, at their worst only a thin veneer of respectability holding them back from outright violence.

If they were up to something, it couldn't mean anything good. Not for the Gaels, not for Ars Publica, not for _anyone_. After all, as tense as things were right now with the 'former' Death Eaters, and Saoirse, and the ICW, and the muggles, it would be _far_ too easy for a civil war to break out. Those never went well for anybody.

As the vote came to a close, Dumbledore surviving the expulsion attempt (however barely), Bríd stared directly across the floor, up at Lord Llewellyn, widely considered this generation's leader among Ars Brittania. A stately, dignified-looking middle-aged man, tall and blond-haired and well-dressed, he didn't seem particularly surprised, but there _was_ a shade of annoyance on his lips. He'd _wanted_ the vote to pass, Bríd knew that instinctively, he'd _wanted_ to expel the Light's own Chief Warlock. His faint displeasure clearing, his lips instead tilted into a smirk, mocking and taunting, directed at Ciara right at her side. He couldn't have made it any clearer if he'd stood up and shouted at them across the Hall.

Ars Brittania was up to something. And Bríd had no idea what it was.

_Fuck_.

* * *

"Sev!"

Severus managed not to flinch at the overly exuberant greeting from an individual who most certainly should _not_ be in his offices, looked up from the notes he was scribbling with his most forbidding scowl — not that he expected it to have any effect whatsoever. He was supposed to have nearly another _month_ of blissfully student-free days to enjoy, damn it! "Bellatrix, what the hell are you doing here? I distinctly remember asking Ashe to ward this office against shadow-walking."

"Yes, and? I mean, Babbling's a bloody genius — anchoring your wards in Shadows so that they'll work across the planar boundary is fucking brilliant. But it really should've been obvious that anyone who can shadow-walk can still get to the anchor points, and you'd have to use shadow magic to monitor them properly, so... Theoretically awesome; practically, not so much. Well, okay, most people who can shadow walk probably _aren't_ cursebreakers, because why would they need to be, they can shadow walk pretty much wherever. But useless for _your _purposes, at least."

Severus sighed. He probably should've expected that — Ashe _was_ very much an academic. "And _why_ are you here?"

She dropped into one of the student chairs, obviously with no intention of leaving any time soon. "Have you decided who you're taking on as an apprentice yet?"

"Ah. So you've heard about that."

That was even less surprising than her getting around his wards. Quite honestly, he was surprised she hadn't come to annoy him about this _weeks_ ago. Mirabella had almost certainly mentioned the ongoing drama between the Ministry and Hogwarts at some point. The heart of the conflict was a push to expand the Hogwarts faculty. Dumbledore had been fighting against it all summer — blindly opposing the Ministry meddling in the way he chose to run his little kingdom, Severus was certain, because it wasn't as though Mirabella's reforms were _unreasonable_. He and Minerva had been arguing for _years_ that they needed to bring on supplemental faculty for at _least_ the core classes.

One professor for each subject might have been sufficient in the post-war years when classes had averaged thirty-five to forty students, but the historical class size average was at least twice as large. _One-hundred and six_ students had accepted places in next year's incoming class, the result of a post-war boom in fertility combined with the presence of a muggleborn contingent representative of their actual prevalence in the population (in the absence of Death Eaters murdering anyone whose name was added to the Accidental Magic Office's list of known muggleborns). Defense was going to be a _disaster_ — or, well, it would have been if Cassie hadn't volunteered to teach it this year, but this _would _still be a problem after her contract expired — and Minerva and Filius's practical lessons were nearly as dangerous. Even Pomona had expressed her concerns about keeping order when her classes were released into the greenhouses, and Severus flatly refused to offer potions labs with _fifty-three_ students in each section.

_Children would die_.

The Department of Education agreed with him on that, as it turned out. Dumbledore, however, had managed to get the measure Mirabella had proposed to _force_ him to simply hire more staff (instituting a legal maximum student:teacher ratio, citing student safety in practical lessons) sidelined indefinitely in the confusion following the aborted attempt to remove him as Chief Warlock.

The Director of Education had countered by inviting every Hogwarts professor with at least one Mastery to a private dinner — so, all of them save Binns, Hagrid, Cassie, and Flamel, who actually had _several_ Masteries, but was masquerading as a peri for some gods-unknown reason and therefore couldn't admit it — where she had urged them to take on apprentices, under an obscure clause of their hiring contract. Dumbledore had never encouraged his staff to take on personal students — actively _discouraged_ it, in fact, on the grounds that he didn't want their attention to be diverted from their duties to _Hogwarts_'s students. (_Ha._) But he couldn't actually _prevent_ them from doing so, the Board had to approve changes to the hiring contract, and they simply _wouldn't_. Mirabella was a _far_ more convincing politician than Dumbledore, and moreover she was right about the safety issue. At least half the families on the Board had children who would become students within the next three years, that argument would sway them easily.

It had caused some discord within the school, as Filius, Ashe, Septima, Aurora, and Severus himself had immediately begun reviewing applications — they all received several every year, regardless of the fact that they never accepted any of them — while Minerva, Pomona, and Charity had refused. Though in Charity's defense, she didn't really need any help with her classes, and her mastery was in Theory, anyway. It was a bit difficult to imagine their Muggle Studies professor was inundated with applications in the same way Severus, Ashe, and Filius were. Minerva was obviously unwilling to argue for a reduction in her workload if it meant going against Dumbledore, and Severus suspected Pomona simply felt sorry for the Old Goat.

(And also that she was planning to just ask some of her seventh-years to help her keep an eye on the children, under the guise of helpful Hufflepuffs who just happened to enjoy spending their afternoons wandering around the greenhouses and helping children who happened to be taking lessons in the same place at the same time, because they were Hufflepuffs. That _had_ been Severus's plan before Mirabella had begun meddling, though of course he would have had to offer recommendations at the very least to get his Slytherins to cooperate.)

Dumbledore had, of course, been _furious_, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had _attempted_ to intimidate them and 'reason' with them, but he hadn't stood a chance. When even _Poppy_ had announced she would be taking on a trio of likely young Healers — just today, at lunch — he had accused her of _joining the mutiny_ and walked out the front doors, apparently finally accepting the fact that the power he believed himself to wield was almost entirely the product of other people's willingness to obey him. Severus wasn't entirely certain where he'd gone, perhaps down to his brother's pub, but it wasn't terribly important — he was certain he'd come back, probably with some plan to thwart one of the other measures which had taken effect three days ago as a symbol of noble resistance to the government interference they represented, or whatever he had deluded himself into believing he was fighting for.

"Just today. And you know what I realised?"

"_What_?" he asked, injecting as much wary suspicion into his voice as he could.

Bellatrix grinned. "This means you're going to have someone who's actually _supposed_ to do your marking! Someone who isn't _me_!"

She _could_ try to sound less gleeful about that, but Severus really wouldn't expect her to. Of course, he hadn't _really_ expected her to do all of his marking anyway. It would have been _nice_, and she certainly had the time — she hardly ever attended her lessons, and students were in class less than half as many hours as professors, anyway — but no one in their right mind had ever described _Bellatrix_ as _nice_. He had expected her to find some way to weasel out of their agreement within the first week or two of September. It was only a matter of time, for example, until someone revealed that he'd _practically_ told Dumbledore that she was behind Potter's disappearance, even if he had _technically_ kept his word, and since Granger no longer had a time turner to confiscate there was no incentive for her to do the job _properly_. She could easily give them all 'O's and scribble encouragement of their stupidity in the margins, make twice as much work for him undoing her mischief.

Not to mention, anyone who'd ever _met_ Dumbledore (including Mirabella, Granger, Zabini — even _Potter_, he wasn't actually as stupid as he looked) should have been able to tell her that Severus wouldn't have been able to change his mind about Potter being dead for those two days his tracking charms had implied otherwise. While tricking someone into making an agreement in the first place didn't precisely invalidate it — if it did, he would have dissolved his own vow to Dumbledore a decade ago — it _did_ mean he wasn't particularly inclined to try to hold her to it. At least, not over something as trivial as the bloody _marking_, especially since he hadn't actually _planned _on her doing it after Granger's time turner was revoked. (He'd only forced her do it in the first place to fill some of her excessive free time...and to make the point that he _could_.) She'd simply assumed he'd have a price in mind for his cooperation with her little scheme, so he'd taken advantage of the moment.

Truthfully, if she'd warned him ahead of time, he probably wouldn't have objected to her taking Potter away from Petunia at all. Yes, it was potentially problematic to have his fate tied to the sinking ship that was Albus Dumbledore's political career — he _would_ have objected to her tricking the Old Goat into thinking the boy was _dead_ — but it seemed most of the criticisms of him focused on his more recent decisions, with the implication that his years were finally getting to him. The trust he had placed in Severus nearly thirteen years ago, vouching for him as a spy for the Light, had yet to come under fire — presumably because Severus had made efforts to demonstrate that that trust was not misplaced. He'd spent innumerable hours since the end of the war building up his reputation as a useful member of society, the closest thing he could get to a degree of security against the possibility of being chucked back into Azkaban if the bastard who had lured him into his current state of indefinite servitude under false pretenses — and, further, _failed to keep his end of their agreement_ — choked to death on a fucking lemon drop.

So, since he personally had yet to be negatively impacted by the fallout, Severus couldn't even say he was particularly annoyed about the whole thing. Removing Lily's son from an abusive muggle home was, he had ultimately decided, worth the hours he'd spent in a panic upon realising the boy's disappearance.

Of course, he _would_ still have to object to her breaking their deal, if only for the look of the thing. "It does not, however, invalidate our agreement."

"Oh, come _on_, you don't _need_ me to do it! Besides, Blaise said it would look weird for you to have an _actual_, _qualified_ teaching assistant, and still make a random fourth-year do the marking anyway." _Traitor._ Not that Severus was surprised — about Zabini telling her that this was a good reason for Severus to let her off the hook, _or _that she'd needed to be told in the first place. "And keeping it quiet that I _am_ doing your marking wasn't part of the deal, so people _will_ find out. Plus I'll be busy with the Tournament, so."

Severus groaned. "Don't tell me you're actually going to enter that ridiculous contest. Did altering the judges' panel not offer enough potential disruption to the upcoming year for your tastes?"

"Are you kidding? A, there's no such thing, and B, all I did was invite judges who wouldn't automatically give the Cup to Britain. Besides, winning this thing is practically a family tradition by this point."

Severus chose not to comment on the idea that the House of Black had a _tradition_ of _winning the Triwizard Tournament_, mostly because he couldn't bring himself to doubt it — it sounded _exactly_ absurd enough to be true. "You _do_ realise that the I.C.W. is sending a neo-Grindelwaldian race traitor as their representative? To _Albus Dumbledore's school_. In _Britain_."

"Well, I knew he married into a veela clan. And I think they prefer neo-_Gemeenschoppist_. But he's a diplomat, he can't be _that_ offensive. I'm _really_ looking forward to seeing Cassie Lovegood's face when she realises Miskatonic is sending Angel Black, though."

That name meant nothing to him, aside from the fact that the girl was potentially related to one of the judges. Presumably distantly. Obviously it was unlikely that Cassie would get on with _any_ representative from Miskatonic — their researchers weren't _all_ dark mages, but they did all at least _tolerate _the presence of a small minority of individuals whose work was only ethical when _good_ was defined as _contributing to the development of the body of collective knowledge_ — but he couldn't imagine she would like this Angel Black less than Dumbledore or Delacour would. Especially since he was _almost certain_ Dumbledore was not expecting a representative from Miskatonic. He had mentioned that Flamel would be joining Cassie and Delacour on the panel (despite ostensibly being _dead_), but not a bloody thing about the fucking _University_ sending someone. He raised an eyebrow in a silent question.

"Ah... You know about the House of Black in the Sixteenth Century? How pretty much everyone was violently insane?" He nodded warily. Granted, the Blacks hadn't been terribly influential during that period — it wasn't exactly the sort of thing Bagshot had included in the textbooks Binns used — but Regulus Black had tutored Severus in History in exchange for help with Potions, which meant Severus's understanding of the history of Magical Britain was a bit more Black-centric than the standard Hogwarts curriculum. "Yeah, well, Angel is one of _those_ Blacks. She's dedicated to the Dark like I'm dedicated to Eris."

_Fuck_. "Yes, I expect that _will _be problematic." That might have been the single greatest understatement he'd ever made.

Did he not already have enough to worry about? Personally, he thought that Potter's visions of Barty Crouch returning to the Dark Lord — Severus was almost _certain_ the twinges he'd been feeling from the Mark over the past week weren't only in his head (he _thought_ the thing was even starting to darken again, these past three days) — and Dora running off to play Black Cloaks with Moody and probably get herself killed when they finally caught up with the Blackheart — the senior Bellatrix hadn't responded to the letter he'd asked her alter-ego to forward, though he had received several letters from Tonks which, reading between the lines, assured him that they were nowhere near catching up to their quarry, at least for now — and the changes to the Tournament that he'd _already_ known about _and_ the ongoing tensions with Dumbledore were quite enough to be getting on with. But no. _Apparently not_.

He was going to die, he realised. Before the end of her tenure here at Hogwarts, the junior Bellatrix was going to drive him into an early grave.

"Are you _trying_ to get us all killed?"

"No? Why would I...?"

"Oh, I don't know, but you _do_ realise that Dumbledore and Lovegood are both going to want to kill this black mage of yours — I presume she won't be inclined to _let_ them — Dumbledore's going to want Delacour deported for his politics, Delacour is politically obligated to object to the presence of _any_ representative from Miskatonic, and everyone thinks Flamel is _already dead_?"

"Yes... I don't see how that would end in anyone actually _dying_, though. Well, unless they decide to send the Aurors after Angel, but Dora's safe on the Continent, so."

Yes, _so_ safe, out there with a paranoid old man trying to hunt down the most dangerous person Severus had ever met. At least she wouldn't be killed by _this particular_ mad Black. _Thank the gods for small favors_, he thought sarcastically.

"I guess it's possible Dumbledore might lose it like Trelawney. Still wish I could've seen that — is it true she tried to kill herself?"

"No, you sadistic little monster. She believes she has been cursed with the power to control life and death and Fate Itself, but she's not suicidal." At least not now that she knew that she hadn't accidentally killed Potter.

The sadistic little monster in question stuck her tongue out at him. "Oh, like you have any room to talk. You could've stopped me. You thought it was funny."

He shrugged. What was he going to say? It _was_ true, after all. He wouldn't have destroyed Sybil's mind himself, but he was hardly going to complain about the loss of the wine-soaked fraud. _She_ was the one who'd made the prophecy that had started the whole fucking chain of events leading to Lily's death. And yes, it _had_ been fairly amusing to watch — Sybil's reaction to that bit of glamoury the junior Bellatrix had used to make it appear that he was wearing _yellow_ was, quite frankly, the funniest thing he'd seen in _years_.

"Is she going to be back next year? Or has Dumbles finally pulled his head out of his arse and sacked her?"

Severus was entirely unable to suppress a snort of annoyed exasperation. Bloody stupid question. "Of course she's not going to be back, she's delusional!"

"Oh, is sanity a requirement to teach at Hogwarts, now?" the girl quipped. "Honestly, I would've thought Zee would focus on making sure all of the professors were actually _alive_ first, but..." She trailed off with a rather speculative hum.

Was she... Well, there were _worse_ ways for her to occupy herself, he supposed. (If nothing else, there _was_ a silver lining to her entering the Tournament in that it _would_ legitimately keep her busy, even if it did also give her more opportunities to create an international incident.) "Even _you_ can't drive a ghost insane," he said derisively, with _every_ intention of goading her toward the idea, if she _wasn't _actually considering that ridiculous project already. Of course, he wouldn't put it past her to find a way to do it, but it would certainly be more difficult than driving _Sybil_ around the twist — she'd already been halfway there.

Bellatrix snorted. "If I wanted to get rid of Binns, I could just exorcise him. I mean, it can't be _that_ hard. So, Trelawney's not coming back, do we know who's replacing her, yet?"

"A metamorph calling herself Shirazi."

The girl's eyes grew wide. "Are you taking the piss?"

It occurred belatedly to Severus that Flamel might not intend for the students to realise that she was in fact human, despite the fact that all of the greater fae had vanished several centuries ago. "No. Though I suppose I ought to have said _peri_ — gods only know why, but she's chosen to masquerade as a bloody fairy for the duration of her tenure here."

She blinked at him, her head tilting to one side in confusion. "Oh, right, you're muggle-raised. Metamorphs are fae-touched — it used to be a thing, people thinking they were changelings, you know, fae masquerading as humans. Doing it the other way around is a joke, kind of. A really _old_ one, I read once that up to half of everything we know about the fae is actually shite made up by metamorphs to fuck with people." That..._did_ sound suspiciously like something Dora would think was hilarious, he'd have to ask her if it was true. "Though I guess she might've just wanted something different after six-hundred years of Flamels. Oh, come _on_," she added, in response to the raised eyebrow inviting her to explain that little deduction. "It's _ridiculously_ improbable that some _other_ metamorph with an interest in traditional witchcraft would show up here _right_ after I invited Flamel to join the judges' panel. I'm right, aren't I?"

Severus rolled his eyes, consoling himself with the fact that it likely wouldn't have taken Bellatrix more than a single meeting to realise that 'Shirazi' wasn't actually a peri on her own. "I don't imagine she'll appreciate you outing her."

"As if I would. We _like_ metamorphs, Sev. Especially when they're having everyone on about who and what they really are. Who else is new? Defense, obviously... Did Dumbles find a way to keep Hagrid on?"

"Why _wouldn't_ Hagrid be kept on? It's not as though he let a third-year get savaged by a thrice-cursed hippogriff in one of his lessons."

It _also_ wasn't as though there was actually much magic involved in Care of Magical Creatures. Dumbledore had argued that because of that fact, and because Hagrid had _decades_ of experience actually _caring for magical creatures_, he ought to be considered a qualified instructor, even if he wasn't actually a qualified _wizard_. He'd passed the practical exam the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures used to certify their field agents over the summer, and the Department of Education had signed off on his simply following the curriculum Kettleburn had designed last year, which meant that yes, the gentle giant would be retaining his position come September (though there would be an additional instructor brought on to ensure that the students could, in fact, pass their OWLs and NEWTs).

She snorted. "So are _you_ responsible for making Care all lame? Probably should've guessed. You're an arse, you know that?"

"I daresay as many people have called me an arse as have called you insane," he noted. "I simply reminded Hagrid that the average human child is far less resilient than _you_. If it had been young Draco who was injured, Hagrid would have been lucky to avoid another stay in Azkaban." If he'd been killed, Narcissa probably would have demanded the half-giant's head — and, knowing her, gotten it. "The curriculum was always rather _lame_, as you put it. Cassie will be covering Defense. Filius has chosen two apprentices, one of whom will likely cover your year's lessons." The Charms Professor had decided to keep the first and second years to ensure they had a solid foundation, and the OWL and NEWT students, leaving third and fourth years to make do with teaching assistants.

"_What!_ That bastard! I was actually going to go to his theory lessons this year!"

Severus raised an eyebrow at the annoyed outburst.

The girl pouted at him. "He made me cast a Cheering Charm."

"So..." Yes, Severus could imagine that had been unpleasant for her, but what it had to do with her attending lessons, he had no idea.

"_So_, he was making a point about me just showing up for the practical parts of his lessons and not knowing what the hell was going on when I agreed to help with the demonstration. So _I_ was going to actually _go_ and make a point about not making me sit through boring, childishly oversimplified theory lectures. I mean, I didn't actually _want_ to go, but— Never mind. You were saying, about the apprentices? Are they all teaching lessons?"

"Septima and Aurora have each chosen one. I don't believe they intend to hand over their actual classroom duties, but you may still see them assisting in lessons." Ashe had decided that none of her applicants had the sort of potential which would make them worth the effort of taking on a formal apprentice. All of them would likely become perfectly adequate enchanters or artificers or wardcrafters, but they were all, in her words, depressingly conventional. Severus considered this a promising indication that he might be able to enlist her in his campaign to keep the junior Bellatrix too busy to wreak havoc on the school at large — after all, she could _hardly_ be considered _conventional_. He really ought to suggest that to Ashe, though probably after the first week of lessons, give her a chance to actually _meet_ the girl first.

"And you? I _know_ you were working on lesson plans when I came in, you have to have picked _someone_."

Nosey brat. "I am considering my options."

He had it narrowed down to five candidates: one young potions master Severus had met at a conference (he was, in fact, almost the same age as Severus, but he'd earned his mastery only two years ago) he would almost certainly bring on, with the intent to hire him as a junior professor when Dumbledore finally allowed him to do so (assuming he didn't prove himself an insufferable idiot in the meanwhile); one older witch who was currently employed as an apothecary; two exceptional potions students, one of whom had gotten a perfect NEWT score, and the other of whom had barely passed, and that only because she'd managed to find _three_ different short-cuts in the practical that even _Severus_ hadn't noticed until she'd done it; and a homeschooled Irish boy who hadn't yet taken his OWLs, but wanted to become an alchemist, and had been advised to establish a firm foundation in potions first.

He could only take three of them — even if one already had his own Mastery, and only wanted to get some teaching experience and for Severus to direct him in developing a specialisation in healing — so he'd determined to bring them in for face-to-face interviews over the course of the next week. He had already decided that they would take classes on a rotating basis, so that he could keep an eye on all of the students' progress (though obviously if he did end up taking on the Irish boy, the schedule he'd laid out would need to be adjusted accordingly).

"But you _are_ going to pick _someone_."

"Yes, Bellatrix, I am going to pick _someone_."

"And that _someone_ is going to do your marking."

Severus sighed. "I _suppose_. They, at least, will have some incentive to do the job _properly_."

"Hey! I did a _great_ job! No one even noticed it wasn't you insulting them in the margins!"

"And I'm sure you would have continued to do such an exemplary job without the threat of losing Granger's time turner hanging over you."

"Wh– Well... I mean, I guess I _could_ have..."

Severus's hand rose to the bridge of his nose almost automatically. "Are you honestly telling me it _hadn't_ occurred to you to simply do the job so poorly that I would take it away from you?"

"Er...not really? You may have noticed, I'm not _good _at being bad at things on purpose and, assuming you always set the same essays, I already _did_ all the research I needed to last year, so it's not like it would be _difficult_, or even take that long compared to the first time." She shrugged. "Mostly it's just really tedious, and I imagine not even having to _do_ any research would make it even _more_ tedious, and most kids are _painfully_ bad writers. I'm not really sure how you stand it."

Alcohol, mostly.

"But I probably would've started setting idiots on fire before I fucked up on purpose."

Severus winced at the memories evoked by that casual reminder of the senior Bellatrix's approach to teaching. Honestly, everyone thought _he_ was bad, but he had in fact seen more than one idiot set on fire (and worse) in the course of his initial training as a Death Eater recruit. "Well in that case, I suppose, yes, I'll assign someone else do the marking, purely in the interests of student safety."

"Great, now that's settled, do you have any idea how to get this thing open?" she asked, plucking a small, round, silver box out of the air between them and sliding it across his desk.

Upon closer inspection, it appeared to be engraved with a complex design of frolicking animals — and enchanted with containment magics, but it wasn't obviously cursed, and the latch, when he prodded it with a single finger, opened easily. "Is this some kind of trick?"

"What? No, not the pyxis, the—" She grabbed the thing back, snatched a golden necklace from it, and casually tossed it at his face. "_This_."

He barely managed to catch it, snagging the chain awkwardly from the air leaving the attached locket — heavy gold and...were those emeralds? — swinging wildly before him, twisting and spinning so that it took a moment for him to realise... "Is this a horcrux?"

Because there was a creepy, pulsing sort of feel to the spells on the thing, almost like the beating of a tiny magical heart, and he could feel a mind, or... Not _quite_ a mind, perhaps, or at least not one entirely human, but _something_ was _definitely_ using mind magic to reach out to him, the most subtle of touches, attempting to find a way past his defenses without alerting him to its presence — not quite subtly _enough_, but certainly sufficient to warn him against using the same method to inspect _it_.

"Yep. Got it from one of the Black elves. Apparently Reggie stole it from a fucking death trap." Reggie— _Regulus_? But...

Severus knew he'd been quickly disillusioned about the War after his induction, knew he'd been having doubts, that he'd wanted to leave, knew that Bellatrix had made an example of his body, burning it before them all — she'd said he'd betrayed the Dark Lord, been killed by him... But Severus had thought the stupid boy had simply tried to run away or defect to avoid the harsh truths of war, not...

"Would've been completely badass if he hadn't been stupid and got caught by said trap, but I suppose we can't _all_ be cursebreakers." She shrugged, as unconcerned as ever.

"He was a recruiter," Severus found himself saying, rather woodenly. "One of the best. Charming, manipulative bastard." He'd also been one of the few mages Severus had ever considered a friend. He had always been a bit naïve about the Cause, young and idealistic. Cynical about people in general, and a consummate liar — he'd been raised to be a subtle manipulator, the sort of man who influenced opinion rather than leading from the fore, and he was _good_ at it — but much of his success was owed to the fact that he did legitimately _believe_ in the Revolution, passionately. Any affection he might have shown for the objects of his assignments had almost certainly been entirely fabricated, but he hadn't just been parrotting the Dark Lord's rhetoric as he worked to turn hearts and minds among their peers.

Severus, who had joined the Death Eaters in the cohort before Regulus's, had tried to warn him — tell him what it was like to _live_ the war, rather than to support it from the sidelines as the young Black had all his life — but he had never stood a chance at dissuading him. Bellatrix had been his hero and protector, the cousin he had always looked up to now become his Lady — he would have followed her through the gates of hell.

In a sense, he had. He'd joined the Death Eaters just after his seventeenth birthday, and was dead four months later, his only legacy a scorch mark on the marble floor of the Dark Lord's Court.

And, apparently..._this_. Severus glared at the bauble, strung on its chain.

"Yeah, well, he _was_ a Black. Being a charming, manipulative bastard kind of comes with the territory, you know, deception and all. And we don't do anything halfway, either — when he decided to fuck Riddle over, he went _big_. Unfortunately, Riddle's not an idiot. Reggie ordered the elf that gave that thing to me to destroy it, but it's fucking impenatrable. I'm guessing he inscribed the enchantments on the inside, so we'd have to get it open to kill it. And I haven't been able to figure out _how_. I mean, I assume he _did_ leave a back door for himself, just in case he ever needed it, but..."

"So what do you expect _me_ to do with it? Go drop it into Mount Doom?" Really, there had to be _some_ way to destroy the thing — it was _impossible_ to make something _actually_ indestructible, magic simply wouldn't allow it. It was simply a matter of finding the weak spot. "We can't _all_ be cursebreakers, you know."

She sighed. "There _are_ things I haven't tried yet, I've only had it for a month or so. An unmaking ritual would almost definitely work — Death and Destruction go hand in hand, and Death doesn't _like_ people trying to avoid it. But I don't want to _completely_ destroy it. I mean, Reggie died for it, the least we could do is keep it as a trophy after we deal with the horcrux. And what if there's something neat in there? Plus we kind of need it to track down the rest of him. Red thinks there's at least three others out there somewhere, and the impression of his soul is protected from being used like that as long as it's in there, so."

Pinching the bridge of his nose did _nothing_ to alleviate the Black-induced headache developing behind his eyes. (It never did, really.) Severus scowled. "You _do_ realise that your counterpart almost certainly knows exactly what methods the Dark Lord used to secure his immortality? You _could_ simply ask her."

"No, that would be _telling_. She said she's not going to stop me killing Not-Professor Riddle, but she's not helping, either, so I'll figure it out myself, damn it. Or, well, I won't ask _her_, at least," she amended herself immediately, apparently realising that she was currently asking _Severus_ for help.

Though he still had no idea what she expected _him_ to do with it. "I repeat: _I_ am not the cursebreaker, here."

"No, but you _are_ a mind mage. And so is Riddle. _And_ that thing is _definitely_ trying to get into our heads—"

"You knew that and you thought you'd just _throw it at me anyway_?" Severus interrupted. He'd _assumed_ she hadn't even _noticed_ the mental assault, given her natural occlumency.

"Obviously? Why do you think I was keeping it in a containment box? It _tickles_. I assume you're capable of avoiding getting possessed trying to talk to it, but if I'm wrong, by all means, throw it back in the box."

Severus just stared at her, wondering if she realised how ridiculous that notion was — _talking_ to a bloody horcrux, especially directly. It wasn't unheard of for mages to preserve their consciousness in such a vessel specifically to pass on their knowledge to the next generation or six, but not through direct mental contact. "Why the _fuck_ would I open my defenses to this thing _at all_?"

"Er... Because Riddle's a mind mage, and that thing has to have _some_ intelligence. It _could_ control the enchantments from the inside — that _could_ be his back door, just asking the thing to let him in if he ever needed to get into it for whatever reason."

"No."

"But—"

"_No_, Bellatrix. Even if this thing _is_ capable of deciding to drop its defenses — which I _doubt_ — it has no incentive to do so, given that it would _know_ I am not Riddle. And while I may be capable of keeping it out of my mind entirely, I have no desire to enter into a legilimency battle for control over my body, so I will _not_ be establishing contact with it. Just do your ritual, melt the thing to bloody slag, and have done with it," he advised her, dropping it unceremoniously into the velvet-lined box and flipping the lid shut, immediately cutting off the subtle pressure it had been exerting on his mind. "We'll find some other way to locate the remaining three." Like capture the wraith and use _that_ as the focus of their tracking charm, now that it was no longer in hiding.

"Why would you doubt it?"

"What?"

"You said you'd doubt the horcrux could control its own defenses. Why?"

"Because, Riddle would hardly have wanted to rely on the cooperation of anyone else, even another version of himself, if it became necessary to alter one of his anchors for some reason. Whatever back door he left for himself, assuming he did leave one, that wouldn't be it."

She glared at the box, sitting so innocuously between them. "Well, what _would_ be, then? Because he's not stupid enough to lock himself out of his own wards, which is _basically_ what that would be."

"How the bloody hell should I know? I'm simply telling you that the Dark Lord would have been more likely to use the Slytherin dorm password to lock that thing than he would be to trust any version of himself to cooperate in lowering its own defenses, simply because he asked it to."

The girl raised an eyebrow at him as though uncertain whether he was serious before shrugging and flipping the box open. She hissed the password at the thing — Severus was fairly certain it just meant _open_. Predictably, nothing happened. "I don't think that was it. Any other ideas?"

Severus was hard pressed not to laugh at her deadpan delivery, even knowing that she had legitimately misinterpreted his facetious suggestion. The fact that she was entirely serious only made it more amusing, really. "_That_ was sarcasm, Bellatrix. You may safely assume that I have no other ideas."

"It's hard to tell when _everything you say_ sounds sarcastic," she snapped, sounding almost defensive, herself.

He sighed. "I still think the best option is to simply kill the thing and move on."

"_No_. I'm _going_ to figure it out!" She snatched the box away and shoved it back into empty space, pouting at him.

If he didn't know better, Severus would think the horcrux had managed to gain some influence over her, just enough that she would protect it rather than destroy it, but he doubted Eris would allow such a thing. This was just Bellatrix being a stubborn, petulant child. "I'll let you know if I think of anything."

The girl's stubborn annoyance was eclipsed by a satisfied grin. "Brill. See you in a few weeks, then!"

She vanished before he could offer a response (something along the lines of _I should be so lucky_), leaving him to plan his lessons — and, more importantly, his strategy for dealing with the inevitable problems that the presence of a Miskatonic researcher dedicated to the Dark Itself would create over the course of the coming year. He had no intention of wasting a single second trying to guess how to break open Riddle's precious horcrux. He half suspected there _was_ no back door. While it _might_ seem rather hubristic not to include one, Riddle had always had an absurd degree of confidence in his own work, even before he began to lose his mind — it wasn't out of the question that he had locked it up with no intention of ever _needing_ to unlock it, in which case a back door would be an "unnecessary" weakness in the thing's defenses.

So. It would probably help if he had any idea who this Angel Black _was_. Perhaps Anomos would know whether she'd published anything he might have a look at, just to get her measure...

Yes, a trip to the Bookshop sounded like a _much_ more appealing option than spending the next few hours trying to focus on _writing out lesson plans_, he decided, throwing his quill into the inkpot again. It wasn't as though he could concentrate on anything so mundane at the moment, anyway.

(That girl was going to be the death of him, he just _knew_ it.)

* * *

On the edge of the Delacour compound at the heart of the enclave, situated on private clan land but with its main entrance opening into a public street, was a rather disorderly little shop. A small storefront, a bit over a hundred square metres, littered with all manner of enchanted paraphernalia. Most of the space was taken up with ordinary, everyday items — cutlery and crockery, belts and hats and gloves, simple jewelry, that sort of thing — and a few shelves of bottles stacked high and stocked deep, everything from basic healing potions to cosmetics.

Most of the enchantments and potions were designed by the proprietor, of course, but Régis knew she hadn't actually made them — Lise would say, with that dry drawl of hers, that was what apprentices were for. Some of the items were her work, though they were largely display pieces, an example of custom services on offer. There was a bit about warding, advertising the different schemes available, but without any actual wardstones (after all, if the script were hanging out for anyone to see they'd be useless); there was a small selection of weapons laid out, mostly blades long and short (Lise was one of the few humans permitted to study the traditional weapons used by the _mezedaj_); there was a rack of clothing, the synthetic silk shimmering in the sunlight, notes listing options varying from animated patterns to thorough protective enchantments.

Lise was perhaps most known for her skill as a blood alchemist, though naturally that wasn't something one could sell off the shelf. There was a board on the wall, with descriptions of services offered, in some cases accompanied by photos of previous patients, showing off results. Some options were rather frivolous — permanently altering hair or eye or skin colour was a frequent use of blood alchemy — but even some cosmetic ones were a bit...involved, because people could be eccentric sometimes. There were also a litany of medical procedures, treatments for everything from genetic or birth defects, to fertility issues, to sex reassignment, to a long list of cancers and degenerative diseases. The list was slightly longer than the last time Régis had checked, but it always was — Lise never stopped researching and experimenting.

But, as dense and busy as the little shop was, Régis still picked out his daughter instantly. It _was_ rather difficult to miss a veela, after all.

"Papa!" Springing up from her seat behind the counter, Gabbie skipped across the shop, silver-blonde hair and light blue-white dress drifting behind her, and threw herself into his arms.

Tipped back a step by the impact (exaggerated a little for effect), he held the hyperactive girl for a moment, chuckling under his breath. And stubbornly pushing back at the hot and silky-smooth veela magic tingling at the edge of his mind — Gabbie would be fourteen in a few weeks, at that age when her magic had gained that overwhelming, seductive quality to it, but hadn't yet the experience to stop it from leaking all over the place. His girls hadn't seemed to mind, the handful of times he'd slipped around them — hardly seemed to notice, in fact, as he had enough self-control to not make an idiot of himself even then — but it was for his comfort more than theirs.

"What are you doing here? Oh!" Gabbie started a bit, pulled back to look up at him. Compared against her sister, Gabbie took rather more after their mother, round-cheeked and wide-eyed, but with a tiny little button nose that was all her own. A wet shimmer in her bright yellow-orange eyes — apparently a veela thing, it was common among the People — she said, "I don't mean it's bad! I just, I thought you'd be at work."

"Well, yes, but I thought I'd come visit for lunch. Why, should I not have?"

Gabbie grinned. "No, that's okay. I should tell Auntie Lise I'm going first, though."

"Go put some shoes on and I'll talk to her quick." He'd noticed Gabbie was barefoot, which wasn't a surprise at all — she almost always was, in the clan compound or indoors anywhere else. He wouldn't bother, but the public areas of the enclave weren't quite so well-maintained, it wasn't out of the question she could step on something unpleasant.

The silly little girl made a face at him, but didn't argue. "'Kay, back in a minute." Gabbie retreated back a step and, in a hot burst of yellow-orange flames, vanished.

A second later, there was a high tinkle of metal hitting tile. Régis followed the sound, then chuckled to himself — it wasn't overly difficult to enchant clothing and jewelry to come with their wearer through that fire-walking thing the People could do, but he recalled these earrings had been a birthday gift from one of her school friends, likely hadn't been intended for veela. Gabbie must have forgotten. He stooped over to pick up the pair of little glittering butterflies before walking over to the door in the back.

Lise's office was something of a low-key mess, but Régis would expect nothing else — his cousin(-in-law) could be more than a bit scatter-brained at times. The shelves were packed, books and binders and folders and even loose papers crammed in from floor to ceiling all along three walls, seemingly at random. Her desk was nearly covered in papers and inkwells, paperweights in the form of blank wardstones and bits of metal etched with glyphs holding down stacks here and there. A red scarf fringed with white was hanging from the curtain rod, under it a pair of boots, one tipped over onto its side.

Spotting a pair of tights thrown carelessly against one of the shelves, Régis felt a smirk twitch at his lips. The rest wasn't so unusual, but _that_ was certainly out of the ordinary. He could only assume Chloé — Appoline's cousin and Lise's wife — had dropped in at some point this morning, and Lise had neglected to put them back on.

The room was rather more occupied than Régis had expected, Lise apparently meeting with her apprentices and journeymen — they came and went with enough regularity Régis only recognised Doriane, Lise and Chloé's eldest, a grown woman now. Lise was reclined in her chair, bare feet crossed on a corner of her desk, a folder propped up open on her thighs. (Her skirt looked roughly knee-length, so yes, those tights were probably today's.) Her short black hair was its usual untameable mess, her sharp face in its stern lecture mode, age just starting to show at the corners of her eyes — she was nearly fifty now, which was still comparatively young for a witch, but she was starting to get up there.

The conversation between Lise and her students/employees, something about scheduling the blood alchemy rituals and custom enchanting projects they'd arranged over the next couple weeks, petered out as they realised they had company. "Oh, Régis. Did you need something?" She still had the slightest trace of a British accent, though less noticeable than it'd been when first they'd met. Lise had married into the Delacours a handful of years ahead of Régis — she'd been in his wedding party, in fact — but she'd been relatively new to the Continent at the time.

"I was taking Gabbie out to lunch, if you can spare her."

"Oh, sure, go ahead. Don't bother closing up the shop behind you, I think we're almost done here."

"Right. Have fun, everyone." He was sent out with a chorus of _you too, Mister Delacour_s and one _piss off, Uncle_, shut the door behind him with a low chuckle — Lise had been a _terrible_ influence on Doriane, it was kind of adorable.

He only had to wait a few more seconds before there was another flash of fire, dissipating to reveal Gabbie standing in the middle of the room, now with the addition of sandals, thin leather straps winding nearly up to her knee. (She'd probably prefer something smaller and simpler, but if there were too little to them they'd end up flying off at some point.) "Okay, ready to go?"

"Yep. You dropped these, by the way," he said, holding out his hand, her abandoned earrings glinting in his palm.

Gabbie blinked, lips curving in a silent _oh_. "Dammit, I keep doing that," she groaned, plucking one out of his hand, picked off the back and started sticking it back in. "I should ask Auntie Lise to enchant them for me. I don't want to lose them, they're Cvétka's and they're pretty!"

That would be possible, but not very easy — metal was harder to fix to carry through veela fire than cloth or leather, and these things were rather small, the glyphs would have to be _tiny_. Régis noticed Gabbie was still struggling to get the back onto the stud, fumbling and glaring sightlessly at a wall. "Did you want help with that?" He knew Appoline or Fleur usually had to help her with her earrings if there wasn't a mirror on hand, she was hopeless without one.

Gabbie pouted up at him, her lips getting that adorable little sideways quirk of hers. "Yes, please."

Régis ruffled her hair a bit before moving to help, which just made her pout harder, but it only took him a handful of seconds to get both of the little butterflies back in their places. He did have practice at it, after all — Appoline had a bad habit of drifting off with them still in, and when they'd been little he'd helped Fleur and Gabbie both with theirs more times than he could count. (The things he picked up raising girls.) Straightening her hair with a few gentle swipes of his fingers, he smiled. "There we go. Come on."

The veela and the lilin — the People of the Song, as they called themselves — had their own history stretching back millennia, their own language and traditions. As much as they might _partially_ integrate into the local culture, they did always retain certain quirks of their own. One of these was a rather more communal sense of property than humans tended to default to. Lise, for example, she only charged outsiders for her products and services — though she often waived the fee for medical things, if the person in question had the need but not the means. On the other hand, residents of the enclave, be they veela or lilin or human, didn't have to pay at all. It was the assumption here that people would take as they needed and give as they could, they were all in it together. To them, this wasn't even something that needed to be remarked upon. It was simply how things worked.

No matter how foreign and strange the way the People did things had seemed at first, it was one of the things that had first captivated Régis about them — despite what some of his more vulgar colleagues suggested, his love for Appoline had come _after_ he'd grown to admire the People, not the other way around.

A good example of the ordinary way of things here was what became of the fountain square at lunchtime. At the centre of the compound was a largely open space, tile glittering in the sunlight, occasionally broken with bushes and trees, the air cooled with fountains dotting the clearing. Every day, a number of the locals would set up cookfires and iceboxes, food and drink prepared and laid out for any who wanted it. Exactly what was on offer shifted day to day, depending on who had come out to cook this time or what happened to be in season, sometimes preparing too much or too little to feed all who came (though, in the latter case more volunteers usually made up the difference). It wasn't precisely a dependable or efficient system, but Régis rather liked the random, organic nature of it, the square turned into a miniature festival for a few hours every day, never the exact same thing twice.

Of course, veela cuisine was a bit...odd, by most European standards. The People seemed to prefer seafood and fruit (especially berries) — while grains and beans and fowl turned up often enough, vegetables were seriously underrepresented, and he wasn't certain he'd _ever_ seen a veela eat beef or pork even once. And everything was so damn _sweet_, even sauces and stews that didn't appear to be at first glance, he had to be careful serving himself or he could end up with something he couldn't even stomach.

He could only assume their metabolism was different from humans' — if it weren't probably half of them would be overweight or diabetic.

Scooping himself a portion of a raisin and almond pilaf he knew was edible, he staked out a spot on the edge of one of the fountains, somewhat removed from the rest of the attendees. (The People were _very_ friendly, but he did have something he needed to talk to Gabbie about, it wouldn't do to be interrupted.) He only had to wait a few moments before she came flouncing over, and he failed to hold in a cringe when he saw her lunch — shrimp and berries (currants, cherries, and bilberries, looked like) in a thick glaze, and a crêpe with honeyed strawberries and a dusting of powdered sugar.

Though he knew other veela would think it a perfectly fine meal, Régis would be _very_ sick if he tried to eat that. The food was probably his least favourite thing about living with the People.

Partially in an effort to distract himself from Gabbie's lunch, he asked, "So, have you heard from Cvétka lately?"

"Oh, er, no, not for like a week now." Gabbie paused, plucking a shrimp and a few berries off her plate — with her fingers, it apparently hadn't occurred to her to look for utensils. (Silly girl, that glaze was going to stain her fingers something awful.) "Cvétka and Dragí and their family went on holiday, somewhere in the middle of nowhere up the mountains over there, they said they'd be out of owl range for a little bit. They invited me to come with but, um..." She trailed off, popping another berry in her mouth and looking rather sheepish.

"You'd get tired, I know." As a consequence of the changes that had been made to them eons ago, the People needed to take energy from other people to survive — they fed off the minds of other beings, in much the same way vampires fed off their blood (though neither race much appreciated the comparison). They needn't necessarily hurt anyone, but they both needed more and had less control over the process when they were young, which was an _awful_ combination.

A grown woman like Appoline could sustain herself off of Régis alone without too much difficulty, though even at her age they still brought in a third occasionally, if it was starting to drag at Régis too much. (The People didn't _need_ to sleep with the person to get what they needed from them, but they generally preferred to.) A young veela like Gabbie, so soon after meeting the sky (a sort of magical metamorphosis thing, so far as he understood), it would be _much_ too easy for her to seriously hurt someone. Even if she spread herself across both Cvétka _and_ Dragí — which was something Régis preferred not to think about, his baby girl having threesomes with her schoolmates, but such were veela — it would still be possible to take too much, if she slipped. The People could be quite dangerous at this age, to people who couldn't protect themselves.

Régis hesitated a moment, wondering if he should ask if she were doing okay — he _did_ worry, even if he wasn't entirely comfortable knowing the details. But he was sure she was fine. He'd seen veela who weren't getting enough before, it was always very obvious. "I'm sorry we couldn't go anywhere this year, love. It's just been so busy at work, with this Tournament business coming up..."

Chewing at another shrimp, Gabbie frowned at him for a moment, probably wondering why exactly the Triwizard Tournament should have anything to do with him. (It _shouldn't_, ordinarily.) She shrugged it off after a second. "That's okay, I know how these things go sometimes. If you're busy, you're busy, that's not really your fault. Besides, Auntie Lise has been letting me mind the shop all summer, and even letting me help with some of the enchanting sometimes!"

"Wow, really? I thought you were a little young for that kind of work." Régis had known about this already — Lise had confirmed he and Appoline were comfortable with it first, with assurances she wouldn't let Gabbie touch anything too volatile — but there was no good reason not to play along. "You are being careful, aren't you?"

Gabbie rolled her eyes. "Obviously, Papa, I'm not _stupid_."

"I didn't say you were, love, that's just advanced work for someone your age."

"If I were coming up with the script myself, maybe, but I'm just scratching into things what Auntie Lise tells me to. It's not hard. Dorrie keeps trying to give me her easy work," Gabbie said, pouting at her absent cousin, "but it's still fun, and Auntie Lise keeps giving me stuff to read about enchanting and stuff, and she says if I keep up on my Potions and Transfiguration we can start doing blood magic next summer!"

_That_ was news to him — either Lise was just trying to keep the excitable girl occupied so she could get anything done this summer, or she was already grooming Gabbie for an apprenticeship years ahead of time. Which, that was perfectly fine, Lise was brilliant and well-respected in her field and Gabbie could certainly do far worse than study under her favourite aunt. Twisting his lips into a smirk, "I guess you haven't showed her your Transfiguration marks, have you?"

"They're not _that_ bad! That class was just _so boring_ this year, Mister Sartini was _awful_. But I'll work on it if Lise'll teach me, that blood alchemy stuff she does is _so cool_."

"Oh, it is all very neat, even if I don't know what she's talking about half the time." Academic types like Lise always gave him a headache if they went on too long. "But it looks like you've already started a bit on blood magic yourself."

Gabbie shot him a confused frown for a second, before following his gaze to her own hand. "Oh, that." Yes, _that_ — the glaze from her lunch had already thoroughly stained her thumb and first two fingers an obvious red, shading into purple at the tips. Her lips quirked in annoyance, but then she shrugged, popped another berry into her mouth. "If blood is always this yummy I owe Evi an apology."

Régis laughed.

Over the next minutes, Gabbie rambled on as she was like to do, broken only by occasional bites of her lunch. The rate she was going at it, Régis could hardly get a word in edgewise. Not that he'd expected much else — Gabbie had always been a strange, hyperactive child, he was long since accustomed to this. (Several in the clan had suggested this had something to do with Gabbie being half-lilin, but Régis couldn't say, he hadn't met but a few.) He was perfectly happy to listen, throwing in the occasional question or joke, slowly wearing away at his pilaf.

Things she'd been learning with Lise and her students, and enchanting was just _so cool_, even if the actual carving of the things was very tedious. Going on a long tangent about a couple of her friends in the compound, eventually leading to a (human) boy attached to one of the lilin clans somehow. (The People needed humans to survive, a significant proportion of the clans was and always had been human — though the language used to describe them was somewhat different than that for ones who'd married in, like Régis or Lise, it was complicated.) This boy was, apparently, very funny and very handsome and just all around _awesome_, and yesterday she'd been invited to a party (read: orgy) she'd known he would be at, but she hadn't gone, _because_ she liked him (it was easier for veela to slip and hurt people they actually had feelings for), and yes, she knew she was being smart and responsible and everything, and she _definitely_ didn't want to accidentally hurt anyone with her weird veela sex magic stuff, but it was still sad, she wished she didn't have to avoid him so much. That was a good thing about Evi, she guessed, she didn't really have especially squishy feelings for her — she _liked_ her, of course, but just kind of in a friend way — but vampires were a lot less...fragile than humans were, she didn't have to worry about breaking Evi. Ooh, that reminded her, they'd been talking, and Evi was wondering if she could come visit for a few days, but that might be rather complicated, what with vampires and sunlight and all, it might not be safe for Evi to come here. Maybe Auntie Lise could set up some wards ahead of time, it _was_ possible to filter out the parts of sunlight that hurt them, some of the newer buildings and all the little gazebos across campus had them in. But Mamie might not like having a vampire in the house, people could be very racist about them sometimes, she should probably ask first... Oh, speaking of some people being very racist, Fleur _had_ decided to go along with the group to Britain, but of course she did, Fleur was _great_, she was _way_ cleverer than everyone else Gabbie had heard was going, she had a really good shot at winning. Just, _not_ going, because the British were dumb and mean, that was just silly, and it would kinda be letting them win without even playing, and that just wasn't right, _obviously_ the right thing to do was to go and show them how stupid they were right in their stupid faces, and it was kind of sad Fleur wouldn't be at school, but younger family and friends were allowed to go along — professors were coming to keep up their studies, don't worry, she wasn't going to fall behind — and that might be interesting, to go somewhere that _wasn't_ another commune somewhere else, she didn't really go out into solely human spaces very often, that could be interesting, and—

"Gabbie love, I—" Régis cut off with a sigh, frowning up at the sky for a second. He just knew she wasn't going to take this well. Setting aside his empty bowl quick, he turned more fully toward her — which was slightly awkward, sitting side-by-side on the rim of a fountain, perhaps not the best place for this conversation. "I must be honest with you, I did not come only to visit. There is something I need to talk to you about."

Gabbie had taken the opportunity of the interruption to start in on her crêpe — she was holding the thing with both hands, one end stuck in her mouth, sitting there blinking at him with her head tilted in confusion. It was unfairly adorable, but his girls were often unfairly adorable. She tore a bite off, swallowed it too quickly to have properly chewed, that was probably unpleasant. "You have serious face."

"It's about the Tournament. You see, the C.I.S. was invited to appoint a representative to the judges' panel." It had caused a bit of a stir, apparently — the CIS had been uninvolved in the planning, the event largely a British vanity project, had had virtually nothing to do with it until the president of the Council of Education and Culture had gotten a letter from someone attached to the British parliament. Cassie Lovegood had also been invited, he knew — she'd pulled out of a tournament in Sri Lanka, and recently announced she was teaching at Hogwarts for the year — but if there were more alterations nobody had told him. He _had_ heard the girl who'd sent it was somehow involved in Dumbledore's political troubles back home, but Régis neither knew the whole story nor particularly cared to.

He hadn't quite gotten to the point yet, but nobody could say Gabrielle Delacour was slow on the uptake. Her face splitting into a bright, cheerful grin, she chirped, "They're sending you?!"

"Yes, love, they're sending me." Which, _that_ was bloody strange, since he hadn't had much at all to do with education since he'd finished his own — he could only assume someone up the chain had decided to exile him to Britain for the year as some sort of punishment.

_Everyone_ knew Britain was a punishment detail, cultural backwater and bigoted cesspool that it was, and Régis was well aware that he was...controversial among his peers. For decades now, ever since his early days in the diplomatic corp, as he gave too many signs of his skepticism toward the Statute of Secrecy, and increasingly over the years, as his growing sympathies for the People became more and more obvious. He assumed one of his superiors hated him, and was sending him away as punishment for some slight — his support for the Martins, perhaps, he'd known there would be consequences for that even as he'd put the words to paper.

Gabbie let out a squeal of excitement, practically bouncing in place — he hated that he had to crush her enthusiasm immediately. "You _can't_ go to Britain, Gabbie."

Her face twisting into a pout, she whined, "I can _too_. They said younger kids can go with if someone entering is their sibling or friend or something, and Fleur says she's going to try."

"Yes, the school will allow you, love, but your mother and I say you cannot."

"But _Papa_, Fleur is going to be gone the whole _year_, and it'll be so—"

"_No._" That came out a little harsher than he'd meant it to, enough Gabbie jumped, her avian eyes going very wide. He forced out a sigh, shaking his head. "I'm sorry, love, but it's not safe. Britain is... In some ways, Britain is behind the rest of the Continent. There are things mages here have gotten past, that the British have not yet."

It only took Gabbie a second to pick up on what he meant. "They're racist, you mean."

"Yes, I mean they're racist." Honestly, they probably wouldn't be happy with him either — the same people who had problems with nonhuman beings often hated _race traitors_ just as much — but he would be in far less danger than she.

"You know, not everyone at Beauxbatons likes veela either."

"It's worse in Britain. Much worse."

"But..." Gabbie frowned, probably trying to look firm and stubborn, but that adorable quirk in her lips softened the expression too much. "Fleur said she already asked you and Mama if she could go, and you said yes."

It probably wasn't worth explaining that he and Appoline had argued with Fleur about that for some time — neither of them wanted her to go, but Fleur had insisted she was old enough now to make her own decisions, which was fair. Gabbie, on the other hand... "Your sister is older than you, love."

The frown was gone, shifting into a plain pout. "I can take care of myself."

"Gabbie..." He gently took her hand, smiled all nice, tried to speak as soft as possible. "It is not bad, you can't help it. But you're still leaking your magic all over the place."

She grumbled, "Yeah, well, I _try_ to hold it in, but it's really _hard_..."

"I know, love. And people here, at Beauxbatons, they know that. They understand that. And they know how to handle it." It helped that most schools here taught everyone the very basics of occlumency, which did help limit the effect People had somewhat — not enough to ignore it _entirely_, but enough to retain control of themselves. Mind magic was a dying art in Britain, he'd heard, like many forms of old witchcraft. (Most of Europe wasn't _that_ much better, it was true, but at least they had this one.) "But over in Britain? There are no veela there, no lilin. Most British, they've probably never even met one before. They feel your magic, they might think you are attacking them somehow, on purpose. And they might hurt you, thinking they are defending themselves."

"But I wouldn't hurt anyone!"

"_I_ know that, love, but _they_ don't. They don't understand. And people fear what they don't understand. And sometimes, they get angry, so they don't have to feel afraid. And angry people sometimes do cruel, horrible things.

"I'm sorry, love. But it's just not safe. You can't go to Britain."

Gabbie kept pouting, orange-yellow eyes wide and bright and sad, obviously trying to sway him. He even felt a prickling of magic on the air, at a guess projecting more sympathetic feelings at him. (He didn't take offence, that was normal for the People, they did it during ordinary conversation all the time.) Not that it would matter even if he _was_ leaving himself open to it — he _did_ have sympathy for her position already, he understood, but they had to deal with the world as it was. _He_ didn't want to be sent away, separated from Appoline and Gabbie and the rest of the clan for much of the year. Yes, Fleur would be there now, but he was just going to worry about her the whole time anyway, surrounded by strangers in this foreign country, one infamously hostile to her kind. If it were up to him, none of them would be going at all.

But it wasn't up to him. He'd protested to anyone who would listen, but nobody _would_ listen, he hadn't been able to talk Fleur out of it. Gabbie, at least, she _had_ to stay here, where she was safe. If something should happen to her...

Finally, the suddenly moody girl broke eye contact, staring up at the sky to let out a long, heavy sigh. "_Fine_. I get it, fine."

"You get what?" Gabbie did have a bad habit of _pretending_ to agree to something, only to weasel out of actually giving her word so she didn't have to obey.

She understood what he was asking for immediately, rolling her eyes before facing him again. "Fine. I promise I won't go to Britain with the others. It's stupid, racist idiots are _stupid_, and I _hate_ it, but fine."

"Thank you, love." Régis wrapped an arm around her shoulders, pulled her into a light hug; she grumbled a little, glaring at the ground with childish disappointment, but she didn't try to pull away. "I know it isn't fair, but sometimes the world isn't fair. Perhaps, when the next one comes around, you can go." At least, he assumed they were trying to revive the thing — it used to be held once every few years, presumably the next would be at Durmstrang or Beauxbatons. "But it just isn't safe in Britain, love. I am sorry."

"Yeah, I get it. It's annoying and stupid, but I get it."

Shooting her a sad, sympathetic smile, he planted a quick kiss on her forehead, reluctantly let her go. "Now, I still have a little while before I have to get back. How about we go find some gelato quick?"

Gabbie tried to keep up her sad face, but did a very bad job of it, her unshakeable cheerfulness leaking out like sunlight from behind a cloud.

* * *

"Fuck! Stop! Fuck, _fuck_— _Damn _it!"

Lyra watched helplessly as Not-Professor Riddle's horcrux burned, the ghostly, wraith-like projection screaming in fury and pain as it was transmuted into acrid, creeping death-smoke and sickly flames. She _had_ cancelled the spell as soon as she realised that the thing was actually _dying_, but too late, it seemed, as the magic continued to unravel, critically damaged. _I didn't mean to do that_.

Eris was predictably unsympathetic_. Good riddance._

_Well, yeah, I mean, that's two down, but... Fucking thing didn't answer any of my questions._

And she _also_ couldn't use it, now, to find the other soul anchors Not-Professor Riddle had floating around out there somewhere. _And_ there hadn't even been anything neat in the bloody locket.

She threw herself back on her bed just as Harry burst into the room, wand drawn.

"Lyra? What's wrong? We heard screaming!"

"_Ugh_, it's nothing, Harry." She had to physically bite her tongue to stop herself snapping at him to bugger off. She was in no kind of mood to deal with him being all protective, trying to barge in and rescue her from _nothing_. Not that she was _ever_ really in the mood to deal with that sort of shite, but sometimes it was easier to fake not wanting to punch someone in the face than others.

"Are you sure?" Blaise asked, half a step behind him. "Because I can't help but notice there's something dissolving the rug by your desk."

"Oh, right. _Evanesco_." The smoke from that particular fire-like transformation was _very_ deadly, but heavier than air, so it would have just dripped off the table where the horcrux had been when she set it on fire.

"What is that?" Harry approached the locket, she could just see him out of the corner of one eye, poking at it with the tip of his wand. Nothing happened, of course, the only magic left would be the protective enchantments, and they were inert as long as the thing was open.

"It's a six-hundred-and-fifty-year-old Slytherin family heirloom which is now _completely_ useless to me, because I accidentally destroyed any information it might have contained while I was trying to get it to talk."

"Oh, yes, _completely_ useless." Blaise sounded _awfully_ mocking, there.

"Trying to get it to talk?"

"It was...possessed. Kind of. I could explain, but it's complicated, and honestly, I'm _so_ not in the mood."

"Yeah, well," Harry said, all serious and concerned. "It's probably just as well. You really shouldn't go fooling around with possessed shite. I mean, it could've been like that diary of Gin's, couldn't it."

"Yeah, well, I'm a bit less likely to get possessed than Gin, aren't I," she snapped, unable to keep herself from pouting up at the ceiling. _Fucking stupid_...

"Wait, are you saying that was..."

"Yes, Blaise, that was a horcrux. And yes, I killed it. And _no_, I didn't mean to. Stupid bastard kept being a smarmy dick instead of answering my fucking questions!"

"So, you..."

"So I threatened to set it on fire, and then it was _still_ being a smug fucking _arse_, so obviously I had to follow through on said threat. Turns out the same fire that works on dementors also works on horcruxes. I was only trying to burn it a _little_, though."

She sat up to glare at the thing, only to find Harry staring at her with a very peculiar expression. "Lyra... Is there something important you've neglected to tell me?"

"I don't know, is there?"

"What the fuck is a horcrux, Lyra?" Blaise must have told him through legilimency, because before she could answer, his eyes went all wide and horrified. "God, that— That's _horrible_! And... That was a piece of Riddle's soul?"

"A sympathetic impression, actually, but yes." She glowered at the thing, despite knowing that the intelligence it had contained was now gone.

"How did you— Why– why didn't you _tell_ us about this?!"

"Er...because you would've been all _we have to destroy it right away_ like Snape, but you live with me, and therefore have more opportunity to nag me about it? _Obviously_?"

"Well, yeah, why the fuck _wouldn't_ we—"

"Because there could've been something neat inside! How many times do I have to explain that?!"

"Was there?" Blaise asked, his tone rather mild in comparison to Harry's. "And how long have you had it? I presume it's been a while, if you've talked to Snape about it..."

She pouted at him. "No. But there _could_ have been. And I've had it a few weeks. Maybe a month. Didn't get it open until I was practicing Parsel yesterday." Her visit with Snape had reminded her of it, so she'd had another go at breaking the damn thing open, left it on the desk in the hopes that inspiration might strike. It wasn't as though its aura actually _bothered_ her. Yes, its constant attempt to infiltrate her mind was _noticeable_, but it couldn't get in to actually _do_ anything to her. It kind of reminded her of hanging around the kitchens when the elves were making something with a lot of pepper in it, just constantly on the edge of sneezing (but with magic).

So it had still been out yesterday when she'd been looking through that Parsel primer she'd found at the Bookstore a while back — now that she could actually _speak_ it (and now that the migraine she'd gotten from stealing it from Harry over the course of like fifteen minutes had finally receded), it _would _be neat to be able to _read_ it, after all. She'd been going through saying words, attempting to match sound to symbol — the introduction was laid out like 'B is for ball' ("X is the symbol for the initial bit of sound/magic of the first word in the Parsel equivalent to the Latin sentence Y"), which meant a lot of saying random words in Parsel and attempting to pick out the individual sound-magic 'phonemes' which weren't _nearly _as distinct out of context as they seemed when she was just speaking the bloody language. Which meant the horcrux had been well within the range of her voice as she spoke the Parsel equivalent of "Clear the path" which literally, in the rather awkward Latin phrase the author had used, was _open the way_.

Apparently Snape's 'sarcastic' suggestion that Riddle had left a back door for himself in the form of the same bloody password that opened the secret passages at fucking _Hogwarts_ was _right_, it just had to be proper, _magical_ Parsel, which was just...positively infuriatingly, really. How the hell had she not guessed that? Well, she knew how — it was fucking stupid to use the same password for everything, and even stupider to undermine the _incredibly solid_ protective enchantments on the fucking locket with a thrice-cursed _password_ in the first place, even if it _was_ a password in an obscure magical language that less than one percent of the population could actually _speak_!

"What's the point of having a Conspiracy to Kill Not-Professor Riddle if you don't tell us about shite like this?" Blaise asked, interrupting her annoyed mental tirade against idiots who didn't understand basic security principles. Not that she _wanted_ to not have been able to break into the thing, but _stumbling on the password_ just felt..._cheap_. (_Almost_ as bad as asking Bella how to get into the thing, but not quite.)

"I _would_ have—" she started to explain, but Harry cut her off.

"_Conspiracy to Kill Not-Professor Riddle_?"

"Er...yes? Did I..." Oh, wait, no, she _wouldn't_ have told him that, because he didn't know that she was from another universe where Riddle was a Hogwarts professor instead of a washed-up Dark Lord. She shrugged, not in the mood to explain _that_ any more than how horcruxes worked. (Given the two topics, she'd pick the horcruxes, honestly — the theory behind them was actually really neat.) "Riddle applied to be a teacher at Hogwarts back in Sixty-One." The same year Bella had started at the school. Not a coincidence, according to her — he _had_ been largely at loose ends, then, with his apprentice trapped at Hogwarts most of the time, and Dippett had told him to re-apply once he had some experience both out in the world and with teaching. "Dumbledore told him to fuck off, because no one who knows anything about Dark Arts can be allowed to teach Defense, apparently, so he became a Dark Lord instead."

"How the _fuck_ would you know _that_? And also, _CONSPIRACY TO KILL RIDDLE?_ You didn't think I might want to be involved in that?!"

_Fuck, Harry, so dramatically outraged..._ Honestly, it wasn't _that_ big a deal, the 'conspiracy' had yet to really even do any conspiring. "Well, no, I _thought_ I'd already mentioned it at some point. And I asked Bella about him, obviously."

Harry just stared at her, slack-jawed and dumb at what seemed a very simple explanation to her — _obviously_ Bella knew practically everything about Riddle, and it wasn't like she was unwilling to talk about him, even if she didn't actually care about killing him — until Blaise pointed out, "You didn't tell him you've been to see Bella, either."

Well..._bugger_.

She was _so_ not in the mood for this...

፠

"Sev!"

"What god have I offended, to have your company foisted upon me _twice_ in a span of _five days_, Bellatrix?"

"Shut up, you miserable bastard. You're going to come kill things with me."

"Excuse me?"

"You, me, cursebreaking mission. Lots of inferi to re-murder. Something referred to as an 'evil potion' to check out. Breaking Riddle's shite because I have spent _way_ too much time explaining myself today. Let's go."

He didn't _have to_ come, of course, she was sure she could thoroughly destroy Riddle's death trap on her own, but Ciardha had always insisted that cursebreaking solo was an invitation to get dead — even he had taken back-up most of the time, usually one of the locals who had asked for his help in the first place — and Snape was the member of the Conspiracy who was most likely to be any good at killing inferi, and also the least likely to object to _her_ killing inferi with whatever curses happened to come to mind. She could cast _fiendfire_ in front of him, and she doubted he'd even _blink_. (Gin wasn't _nearly_ good enough yet to be more of a help than a hindrance, and Narcissa still had an _extremely annoying_ tendency to treat Lyra like a fucking _child_, which she had absolutely _no_ patience for today.)

Snape raised an eyebrow at her. "I'm afraid you're going to have to do a _bit_ more explaining yet today, because I have no intention of running off to kill...inferi? — the term is _exterminate_, not _re-murder_ — without a better explanation than _that_. I _am_, as you see, in the middle of something."

He was in the middle of reading an article in a professional journal of some sort, scribbling notes in the margins with the same red ink he used on student papers. "Professional idiots will still be there when we get back."

"_Bellatrix_..."

"I accidentally killed the horcrux, okay, and Harry and Blaise heard its fucking banshee death wails and barged in and I forgot I hadn't told Harry about the Conspiracy to Kill Not-Professor Riddle, and then accidentally mentioned I visited Bellatrix a couple of weeks ago, and generally speaking it's better to go _exterminate_ a few hundred inferi than murder your baby cousin for being tedious, so." Also, she wasn't in the mood to let Not-Professor Riddle have nice things today. If he would've just answered her fucking questions, she would be in California studying Parsel right now instead of hiding away in Britain to avoid accidentally killing a _second_ person today. Burning his little death trap to the ground sounded like an _excellent_ way to spend the rest of the afternoon, especially since the fucking acromantulae were still hiding from her.

"You...killed the horcrux..._accidentally_." Snape actually seemed to be fighting not to laugh, which she might have considered a sort of victory on any other day. At the moment, however, it was simply another irritation.

"_Yes_. Apparently you have to say the password in actual Parsel—"

"Password?"

"Yes, _password_, you were right, go ahead and rub it in, but I still think it's fucking stupid, even if approximately _no one_ actually speaks real Parsel. Anyway, the horcrux threw out a projection, so I thought I'd see if it had anything useful to say, but the fucking thing wouldn't answer my questions and I _may_ have gotten a bit carried away with my threats, and— Stop fucking laughing at me, Snape, horcruxes are surprisingly fragile, okay! And that is _all_ the explanation you're getting until I get to break all of Riddle's toys, so are you coming or not?"

Snape sighed, acting all put out even though he was still trying not to laugh, but rolled his journal up to shove it in his pocket, in a very Maïa-esque bid to bring along something to read in case he got bored at some point during this little excursion. "I suppose I might as well. Since you've already disrupted my afternoon anyway."

So, might as well go set a bunch of animated corpses on fire. Sounded good to her. "Fabulous, let's go," she said drily, grabbing him by the arm to pull him to his feet, and immediately into the Dark.

* * *

_Hoo boy, political parties. Quick and dirty summary just to get it over with:_

_Ars Publica — the traditional Dark; largely against regulating magic and for rights for nonhuman beings; magical chauvinists, but generally cool with muggleborns; prefers to limit Ministry power (vote: 16, 27%)_

_Ars Brittania — the traditional Light; supports regulating magic and limiting rights for nonhumans; generally blood purists, but willing to compromise; supports a strong Ministry (vote: 4, 7%)_

_Common Fate — historically pro-Ministry; generally supports some regulation of magic but against limiting nonhuman rights; magical chauvinists, but cool with muggleborns; tends to split on Ministry power and economy (vote: 14, 25%)_

_Light — Dumbledore's faction, pulled from AB and CF; supports regulation of magic and limiting rights for nonhumans (with some defectors); generally pro-muggleborn and muggle protection; supports a strong Ministry (vote: 13, 22%; with AB 17, 30%)_

_Allied Dark — Death Eaters, pulled from AP and AB; against regulating magic and supports limiting rights for nonhumans; radically blood purist (though moderating to AP position now); prefers to limit Ministry power (vote: 11, 19%)_

_Last year, the Wizengamot was pretty much deadlocked, no one group carrying enough votes to control the assembly, things going one way or the other issue by issue. More recently, AP, CF, and AD have been forming an alliance, giving them a solid 70% of the vote. (They'd split on bills, of course, but they can control appointments to Ministry offices and the like.) But shenanigans inside CF and AD are going to fuck it up pretty much immediately. Whoops._

_As an example, this vote to expel Dumbledore as Chief Warlock, the same vote referenced in a couple summer scenes. The expected vote was 35-21-2, but the __**actual**_ _result was 27-29-2, due to the Light/AB unexpectedly flipping and AP/CF panicking._

_Yes, I realise I think about this shit way too much..._

CIS — _French initials for the ICW, because 'wizards' is a semantically loaded term._

_How veela and lilin work is taken largely from my headcanon. Nothing is particularly important to go over right now, they'll be explained as they come up._

_Anyway, yay, a chapter. Will be a while until the next one. December is Leigha's busy season at work, she's been pretty much dead on her feet by the time she gets home, and chapter three is mostly her scenes, so. It'll happen when it happens._

—_Lysandra_


	3. Son of a bitch!

"Harry."

"_Haaaa-_rry."

"_Harry!_"

"Come on, Bella. We can leave a note for him or something."

"Note?" Harry muttered, stretching and rubbing at his eyes. Why would Lyra be writing him a note? Why was she even in his room? He started to roll over, but caught himself as his foot hit empty air. _Right, cot_. He sat up instead, running his fingers through his hair. (He needed a shower.) "M'up," he announced, trying to drag his eyes open to prove it. It was surprisingly bright out, the tent — the Black tent, they were at the World Cup, he remembered, in a tent, which was why Lyra and Sirius were in his bedroom, and Blaise wasn't sprawling all over him — didn't have a ceiling, just cloudless blue sky and bright morning sun above him, so he closed them again. Had nothing to do with the fact that he was still half asleep. Nothing at all. (Seriously, this jet lag thing was no joke. What time was it in California? It felt like the middle of the bloody night.) "Wa's goin' on?"

And what had he done with his glasses? It took a moment fishing around in the grass beneath his cot to find them, more or less in the same place he would've put them in his cupboard. When he finally got them on, though, the scene that came into focus couldn't be more different from the cupboard. To all appearances, they were outside, in a round field with silver-speckled black curtains hanging all around the edges of it. They weren't _really_ curtains, of course, they were the walls of the tent, the space inside it ridiculously expanded — enough that it felt weird to Harry, just having their cots set up around a fire. There were a couple of tables and a makeshift loo, but mostly it was just...open space.

Lyra claimed that this was because the tent had been designed for big game hunting — big game like _dragons_ — and obviously you'd want to be able to bring anything you managed to take down into the tent, just for convenience. Harry had no idea if that was true, but he didn't _really_ doubt it, if only because...what the hell else would you do with all this space? Mira said dragon-hunting was illegal, but Sirius had pointed out that _laws _had never actually stopped any of the Blacks from doing anything, ever, and then everyone had gotten distracted by someone a few tents away putting on an impromptu fireworks show, and some Ministry officials running to stop them, because they were _supposed_ to be pretending to be muggles.

Honestly, Harry was surprised anyone was bothering to try to enforce the Statute of Secrecy right now. They'd probably have to obliviate all the site managers and their families after everyone left anyway, because even the people who _were_ trying to look like muggles were doing a _terrible_ job at it. Half the tents Harry had seen so far couldn't possibly be held up by anything but magic — he'd seen one that had _three stories_ — or they had gardens or chimneys, or little kids flying around on toy brooms outside, or flags with their house crests on them. To be fair, most people _had_ managed to figure out how to dress like muggles...more or less. It was just, the ones who didn't _really_ stood out. There were an awful lot of blokes in dress slacks or chinos or plus-fours or shite that looked like they should be on safari in Nineteen Ten instead of just wearing jeans, but compared to the guys wearing full fucking kilts and tophats or purple polka-dotted orange jodhpurs with a lime-green polo shirt, or that one old man in a ruffled pink nightdress, that was practically normal. (And that wasn't even considering some of the things _foreign_ mages were wearing.)

They'd gotten here yesterday afternoon, and at least half the sites were already occupied, there was no way any muggle anywhere nearby _hadn't_ noticed something weird by now. Like, there were no _cars_, for example. They were out in the middle of the country somewhere, and there were four or five big fields full of tents — big like you could fit a couple of quidditch pitches in the one they'd been assigned to — separated by small stands of forest, but there weren't any parking lots. Everyone was coming in by portkey or apparating into clearings in the woods. (Including them. Mira and Sirius had brought him and Blaise side-along, which _never_ got better, no matter how many times he did it.) Harry was pretty sure _he_ would think it was weird, thousands of people showing up here in the middle of nowhere, _out_ of nowhere, if he didn't know about magic.

The point was, the whole idea that _a hundred thousand wizards_ from _all over the world_ were going to somehow _not_ get spotted as wizards was a joke.

They'd played along for a little bit, setting up the tent by hand instead of using magic. From the outside, the Black tent was actually one of the more normal-looking ones, aside from being really, _really_ black and kind of medieval-looking. Something like it could at least be built by muggles, it wasn't like it had an attached _moat_ or something, like their neighbors' (complete with animated alligators, swimming around with kids on their backs). They'd built a fire outside, too, just for the look of the thing — and also (mostly) because Sirius liked playing with matches. But as soon as they'd gotten inside, they'd started using magic again, making a second fire and using freezing charms to make a cooler.

Enchantments didn't work inside the tent, "of course" (Harry had no idea why this should be a matter of course), but regular spells did. They probably could've conjured proper beds and shite, but instead Sirius had dug through a couple dozen chests of old camping supplies, come up with these weird cots that made Harry think of American pioneers or something, and a couple of tables that slotted together without any magic at all, because the whole point of tenting (per Lyra) was to get _away_ from all the creature comforts of modern magical life (and also kill monsters). Mira strongly disagreed, even though this didn't actually mean giving up any creature comforts at all, really, just kind of playing at it, like eating whatever they could toast on a stick for dinner, but whatever. Apparently she'd been expecting there to be a proper flat inside the expanded space of the tent.

"Coffee," Blaise muttered, passing Harry a mug and poking at his feet so he could sit.

"We're going exploring!" Lyra said brightly, entirely too awake for...what? three in the morning, California time? earlier? The middle of the bloody night, anyway, no matter how sunny it was.

"Oh, _God_, Lyra, really? I'm going back to sleep," Mirabella said, flopping back on her own cot and pulling the pillow over her head. "Wake me up for lunch," she added, her voice somewhat muffled.

"That's only like, three hours from now."

"So put up a sound ward and go _away_."

"But—"

"Oh, let her sleep," Sirius said, casting the spell. "She didn't go to bed until seven."

"Yeah, but she's been over here as much as I have all summer, she should be used to— Whatever. You guys are coming, right?" She grinned at Harry and Blaise.

Harry didn't even need legilimency to know from the look on Blaise's face that he'd rather _not_ — they'd gone to bed before Mira and the Blacks (assuming those two had even gone to bed at all), but it had still been _really_ late — but Lyra had gone on at length about how Quidditch was boring and the only reason to come to this thing was to meet people from the other side of the world. Because apparently she saw nothing weird about just walking up to random strangers and introducing herself, asking them about Egypt or the Ukraine or wherever they were from. And Blaise was a complete sucker when it came to trying to make the people he liked happy, so yes, they were probably going to go.

"Come on, Harry!" Sirius gave them a disconcertingly similar grin. Harry hadn't noticed for what seemed like a ridiculously long time, but Sirius and Lyra were practically the same person in some ways, which was...unnerving as hell, mostly. "What's the point of being disguised if you don't ever leave the tent?"

Because Harry _was_ in disguise. Lyra had convinced him it was a good idea — probably because she was still under the impression that he didn't know people thought (or _had_ thought) he was dead, but that didn't mean it wasn't actually a good idea. He hadn't had a Voldemort dream for the past two nights, but he was still _positive_ that he was possessing someone important in the British Ministry. Or possibly using the Imperius curse to force him to do shite without Voldemort having to ride around in his pocket in his little demonic doll thing.

He was..._less_ positive, about that last bit.

The last Voldemort dream had been _really weird_, Harry wasn't entirely sure how much of it was real and how much was just a normal nightmare, but Sirius said it _was_ possible for a wraith to possess a golem, and Lyra insisted it was possible to make a golem that was only a foot tall, though the enchanting would be stupidly difficult, assuming Crouch had used the traditional approach to animating the thing, which he might not have because...reasons. (She'd babbled on about it for nearly half an hour, but that was the point where Harry stopped listening, because he really didn't care.)

Anyway, he was completely certain that Voldemort was somewhere in Britain, which meant he was _much_ more enthusiastic about this disguise thing now than he had been three days ago, when it was just a matter of convenience (people not freaking out about his general existence) and seeing how long it would take for Lyra to realise that he _knew_ she'd faked his death _the whole time_. Which meant he'd been much more willing to let Lyra and Blaise fool around with his hair and cast glamour charms on him for what he was sure was mostly their own amusement, because yes, his hair _was_ kind of ridiculous — not only did it refuse to be straightened, but it _also_ apparently wouldn't hold a Colour Changing Charm for shite — but he was pretty sure they hadn't needed to spend three hours playing with it.

They'd eventually decided to just grow it out long enough to braid it back out of his face — which, _Harry_ thought it looked girly, but Blaise assured him just looked like he was from the Nineteen Forties. They'd also changed the distinctive green of his eyes to a light grey, like Sirius's, and transfigured his glasses so the frames were light and metallic and kind of rectangular instead of round, which, along with having his hair pulled back, made his face look like it was an entirely different shape, and Mira had showed him how to use muggle make-up to hide his scar (which he thought he might just do _all the time_).

Lyra, very amused, had pointed out that all this kind of made him look like he could be her brother, as in the child of Tom Riddle and Bellatrix Lestrange, which... She wasn't wrong, and that was kind of unnerving to realise ("_We even look something alike..."_), but Harry kind of thought it was worth it — at least he didn't look like _himself_. Sirius had suggested that, if it came up, they could claim totally-not-Harry was actually his bastard son from a fling during the war, recently rediscovered, _hurrah_, they just needed to come up with a fake name for him. Like..._John_, or something.

Harry really didn't see any need to do that, though, because the _point_ was to avoid most people's notice. Anyone who talked to him would probably figure out who he was immediately — plus everyone knew he was on holiday with the Blacks, and _they_ weren't in disguise.

"I was planning on leaving the tent _sometime_," he groused. "It's just—" He yawned, cutting himself off. "—early. It's early."

"Give it up, Harry," Blaise advised him, glaring at Lyra over his own mug. "They have no sympathy for we mere mortals with our petty human need for _sleep_."

"Nope."

"None whatsoever."

"So, are you coming?"

"Of course they're coming, Siri, what are they going to do, just sit around being bored now that they're up? That's _boring_."

Which, well...Harry couldn't really argue with that, not when the entire bloody magical world, it seemed like, was right outside, and they were only _hours_ away from the World Cup Final. (Sirius had managed to get them seats in the top box, it was going to be _amazing_.) "Yeah, alright, just— Let me get dressed, and...food?" Because now the coffee was starting to kick in, he was realising that he actually was kind of hungry.

"Food is also a petty human concern," Lyra informed him. "But yes, we kind of got carried away with toasting shite, so there's bacon and marshmallows outside. Come _on,_ get _up_."

፠

By the time Harry and Blaise finally made their way out of the tent, it was midmorning in Britain, regardless of the time in California, and the camp all around them had long since come back to life. They were in a mostly English- and French-speaking area, which meant that pretty much everyone had been awake for hours, the whole place was buzzing with excitement. According to Sirius (who had apparently been hanging out with a bunch of American mages at some point last night), there were other areas where everyone was sleeping — apparently the organisers had set it up like that on purpose. There had to be hundreds of people milling around, wandering between tents visiting with each other, most sporting at least _something_ showing their support for Ireland.

They were, too, of course. Sirius had managed to find muggle-style sport jerseys with the Irish chasers' names scrolling across the back, which was what he and Harry were wearing. Blaise, who claimed to be far too cool to wear such a thing, had been forced into a green tophat with an obnoxious singing shamrock by Lyra, presumably simply because she thought it was funny — she didn't have anything _particularly_ pro-Irish for herself, just a green shirt with some fancy celtic knot thing embroidered around the collar in gold.

Harry thought he could be forgiven for thinking, at first, that the Irish were overwhelmingly popular — they _were_ the favorites to win, if by a relatively slim margin. Victor Krum, the Bulgarian seeker, was one of the best the sport had ever seen (according to an article Harry had seen in _Inside Quidditch_ after the semi-finals), but the Irish chasers were so much better than the Bulgarian starting three that all the serious arithmancers (and Lyra) were saying they would almost certainly get far enough ahead that it wouldn't _matter_ if Krum caught the snitch. It would _really _all come down to how good their _keepers _were. And almost everyone Harry had seen for the first hour or so they'd been wandering around was _clearly_ supporting Ireland.

But then they'd found the souvenir stalls, where there were just as many red-and-white clad Bulgarian supporters as green-and-white Irish supporters (and quite a lot of foreigners who weren't obviously on either side for this match, their countries' teams long-since eliminated).

"Hey, want a Firebolt, Harry?" Blaise asked, recapturing Harry's attention from the very loud, probably staged argument between the witch selling Bulgarian flags that sang the Bulgarian national anthem when they were waved, and the wizard selling Irish flags that sang the Irish national anthem. He was _pretty sure_ the Bulgarian witch was shouting lines from Monty Python in French — Harry _still_ didn't really speak French, but she clearly didn't know the French word for 'elderberry' any more than he did, kind of gave it away — which was just..._what_?

"Er...what?"

_Look, they're tiny Firebolts. You know, if you still want one,_ Blaise thought, poking a model broomstick on display. It zipped to the other side of the table the model-seller had set up, very nearly knocking over a tiny Victor Krum, which scowled up at them as though it knew they were responsible.

Harry snorted. He _would_ have liked a Firebolt, it _was_ the best broom in the bloody world according to _everyone_, but he couldn't justify spending _that much_ money on a bloody _broom_, even if he _could_ afford it (and Lyra wasn't the _least_ bit concerned about him paying her back for it anyway). He'd ended up getting the latest Nimbus, the 2001, which was the same as Malfoy and the rest of the Slytherin team had. It handled slightly better than the 2000 had done, but was similar enough that it had only taken a couple of evenings' practice to get used to it. A bloody _Firebolt_ would probably have taken a _lot_ longer to break in. (_And_ cost nearly as much as Uncle Vernon's _car_, seriously, it was ridiculous.)

The little models _were_ cool, though. "How much?"

"One sickle five."

"Blaise! Harry! Look what I found!" Lyra fought her way out of the crowd waving what looked like a pair of brass binoculars above her head, even as Harry rummaged in his pockets for change.

"Damn. Blaise, I'm short a knut. Do you..."

Blaise sniggered, but refrained from making a terrible pun (didn't matter, Harry had gone red as soon as he realised a terrible pun _could_ be made), just handed him the little copper coin. "What's that, Lyra?"

"They're called _omnioculars_ — I have _no_ idea how they work! I mean, the basic enchantment, sure, that's just recording and variable-speed playback, but they can supposedly do a _play-by-play_ _recap_, in _real time_! Here, I got extras," she said, shoving a pair of omnioculars at each of them. "I _may_ need them back if I break mine before I figure them out, but you can use them until then."

"Yeah, that's Black," a dry, wry voice said, just behind Harry.

He turned to see Gin Weasley, flanked by Fred and George, all three wearing pointed hats with dancing shamrocks on them, and rosettes that were squeaking the names of the Irish chasers on a loop (_Troy! Mullet! Moran!_).

"Hey, Red. Boys. Having fun?" Blaise said, by way of greeting.

"Oh, yeah, we're going to take Bagman for like, thirty-five galleons."

"Poor bastard gave us seven-to-one odds on Ireland winning, but Krum getting the snitch."

Lyra smirked. "You really think he can cover that? Hey, Gin. Good summer?"

"_There_ you all are!" Before Gin could answer, Sirius appeared behind the twins, who looked to see who was suddenly shouting in their ears and grinned.

"_You_ were the one who disappeared." Apparently to get his face painted, because his eyes were now surrounded by a mask of green and gold curly-ques and sort of paisley patterns. He was also covered in glitter, but he had been covered in glitter when he and Lyra woke Harry up. Scantily-clad Brazilians were apparently involved. (Harry kind of _did_ want to know the rest of the story, there, but he hadn't been able to get Sirius to focus long enough to tell it.)

"Nonsense, John!" (Blaise and Lyra both smirked at the stupid pseudonym. Harry just rolled his eyes.)

"Hey, if you lot aren't buying anything, move along!" the wizard selling models interrupted, clearly annoyed. They _were_ kind of blocking his entire table.

Harry grabbed his tiny Firebolt. "Yeah, sorry. Come on, there's tables over by...that way," he said, pointing toward a bunch of food carts on the edge of the little marketplace.

By the time they got far enough out of the throng around the salespeople that Harry could actually hear the conversations around him clearly, Lyra was saying, "Well I _tried_ to visit, but some paranoid arsehole warded your house against shadow-walking, so."

("Ah, yes," "That would be Bill.")

And Gin was staring at him rather disconcertingly. "Harry?"

"No, he's John Williams," Sirius said, completely straight-faced, before immediately turning back to making fun of Lyra for insisting on using illegal dark magic for _everything_ instead of just fucking apparating to the Weasleys' (completely disregarding the fact that she really wasn't supposed to be apparating either, since she wasn't old enough to get a license).

"Er...yeah. I didn't want people to... Never mind. Hey, Gin."

"So...you didn't want people to freak out over you being Harry Potter, so you decided to dress up as Tom Riddle?"

"No, he's John Williams, Sirius's recently rediscovered bastard son," Blaise informed her.

Harry groaned. "You don't have to call me that. And I didn't do it on _purpose_, I just didn't want to look like _me_, and...this is just how it turned out. Blame those two." He jerked a thumb at Blaise and Lyra, who..._had_ been right there. "Where did...?"

"Mira told her to wake her up for lunch, and apparently she and Sirius are getting food. Well, funnel cakes."

Right, so she'd just used illegal dark magic to pop back to the tent for a couple of minutes. (Harry briefly wondered if it was good for her to be doing that so casually — she _had_ just gotten stuck in the shadows for a week, maybe she should..._not_ spend so much time jumping in and out of them? Not that he thought his opinion on the matter would carry _any_ weight whatsoever.) Now that Blaise pointed it out, Sirius _was _in line for one of the food carts, still chattering with the twins about...something. Probably something joke-shop-related, Harry was vaguely aware that they were going to try to start a business when they left school, and Sirius had _very obviously_ never really moved past his glory days pranking people at Hogwarts with Harry's father. (Not that Harry really blamed him, the rest of his life had basically been war and dementors, and a family that made the Dursleys look positively _nice_.)

"Whatever. What have you been up to all summer, Gin?"

She shrugged. "I've been spending a lot of time at Justin's. Black warded his pool house so we can practice, and, well... Mum's not there, so."

Harry gave her a sympathetic grimace. He wasn't really sure what Gin's problem with Mrs. Weasley was, but he'd gathered over the course of their dueling practices last term that they didn't really get on. And honestly, he couldn't see Mrs. Weasley being..._okay_ with Gin...basically spending every free moment she had practicing dueling spells. Even _Harry_ thought she was kind of...intimidatingly intense, about the whole learning to fight _thing_.

"I did get to meet Cassie Lovegood, though," she added, grinning. "I was just going over to visit Luna, and we ended up drinking tea and it was just..._surreal_, I think, is the word."

Cassie Lovegood was, like, the Victor Krum of International Dueling, one of the best the League had ever seen. Except, unlike Krum, she also supposedly went around killing bloody _Dark Lords_ between tournaments, and he was pretty sure she only used light magic to do it. (Kind of hard for him to imagine someone related to _Luna_ being that much of a badass, but.) Harry was actually kind of jealous — he didn't follow professional dueling, really, but Lovegood sounded _awesome_. "Wish I could've been there."

Gin's grin somehow managed to grow broader. "Apparently she's going to be in Britain all year, something to do with the Triwizard Tournament."

"She's one of the judges," Blaise volunteered.

"Judges?" "Who's" "judging" "what?"

"The Triwizard Tournament, and Castalia Lovegood, among others. Mira said she's going to be teaching Defense, too."

The twins' mouths dropped open in identical speechless stares. Gin, though, looked like Christmas had come early. "Are you _serious_?! Zabini, I could kiss you!"

Harry felt himself go red again at that suggestion. It had only been two days since _he_ had finally caved to Blaise's constant flirting and snogged him, and he didn't know _what_ was supposed to happen _now_. He'd spent so much time worrying about the snogging part of...were they, like..._dating_, now? — that he hadn't really thought much about the..._relationship_? itself. Blaise, of course, was still acting like everything was perfectly normal, because Blaise was never awkward about anything. (Which was good, because Harry was definitely awkward enough for the both of them.)

Thankfully, the twins recovered before Gin could realise why he'd reacted that way to what she'd just said (because he was _sure_ she was going to give him shite over it when she finally found out). "_TRIWIZARD TOURNAMENT?!"_

"Isn't your father in the Ministry?"

"Yeah, but he doesn't tell us things like your mother does," Gin said.

"Wait!" "You knew!" "Ginny!" "You traitor!" "Why didn't" "you tell us?!" "We've _got_" "to enter!"

"You can't, you have to be seventeen."

"And I'm going to be the Hogwarts Champion, anyway," Lyra said, appearing out of nowhere with her arm linked through that of a _very_ flustered Mirabella.

"Lyra. _Never_ do that to me again." She actually sounded _shaken_, which, given that Mira was normally about as likely to let on what she was feeling as Blaise, Harry took to mean that getting dragged through Lyra's shadow dimension thing was downright terrifying, and maybe he didn't want to learn after all, even if it did mean not having to be apparated anywhere ever again.

Whatever response went along with the half-surprised, half-confused look Lyra gave her was cut off by the twins objecting loudly to her becoming the Hogwarts Champion. "If we can't enter, you can't either!" "You're even younger than we are!"

"Yeah, but I'm _me_."

"Triwizard Tournament?" Sirius asked, rejoining the group, laden with plates of fried, sugar-coated food. Mira nodded.

("So?" "They won't let you enter, either!" "Besides, even if you did get in, you wouldn't have a chance." "You're still only fourteen!")

("I'd like to see 'them' try to stop me, and have you _met_ me? Me only being fourteen is the only way anyone _else_ would have a chance.")

("She's so arrogant, Fred!" "I _know_, George! It's _adorable_." "You know people have _died_" "in this thing, right?")

"Funnel cake?" Sirius offered, waving the plate in front of them.

"No, I'm afraid shadow-walking doesn't agree with me," Mira said, still looking rather green.

("That's what makes it fun!" said with the trademark Black mad grin.)

"Yeah, well, you're human, aren't you," Sirius muttered, implying that Lyra _wasn't_, but quietly enough that Harry didn't think she or the twins heard him.

Gin definitely did, but she didn't look especially surprised, either because she also knew Lyra wasn't human, or because she thought Sirius was exaggerating or something. Harry was pretty sure _Sirius_ thought he was exaggerating, but he wasn't, really. Lyra had even admitted it, after he'd almost killed her trying to save her from that fucking lethifold last week (and coincidentally fixing her stuck-in-the-shadows-and-therefore-intangible problem, so she wasn't even mad, but that wasn't the point). Apparently, on top of being a fucking _clone_ of _Bellatrix fucking Lestrange_, _and_ having an _actual god_ living in her head, she'd (mostly accidentally, he thought) turned herself into some kind of half-human shadow creature _because learning to shadow walk like a normal person_ (as though normal people learned that sort of shite in the first place) _would take too long_.

Harry had learned a _lot_ of secrets about Lyra over the summer, most of which he...wasn't really sure he'd wanted to know. Obviously he'd _thought_ he did, but the more he found out, the more unnerving and terrifying she seemed, even if she _did_ act like a spoilt kid a lot of the time.

"Harry?"

"Er...no, thanks." They'd just had _bacon and marshmallows_ two hours ago — if Harry hadn't already known that they were insane, that particular combination of 'breakfast' items definitely would've given it away — and one marshmallow was about all the sugar he could stand this early in the morning. (It was _still_ the middle of the night in California.)

"I want one!" Lyra announced, moving to snatch a funnel cake off the plate, but Sirius lifted it out of her reach, sniggering, because he _also_ acted like a spoilt kid a lot of the time. "Don't be an arse, Siri!"

"Not my fault you're a midget, Bella."

"You're not even that much taller than me! _Accio_! Ha! I win!" She gave him a triumphant grin, stowing her wand and sinking her teeth into the pastry.

"Hey! Summoning Charms are cheating!"

"Just wait until I figure out freeform levitation! Your five inches will mean _nothing_!"

Sirius smirked. "Five inches? I think I might be insulted — you _greatly_ underestimate me, I assure you!"

Mira groaned, even as the twins echoed, "Freeform" "levitation?"

"I think that's our cue to be...anywhere else," Blaise muttered to Harry and Gin. "Unless you want to stick around and see if Lyra and Sirius can get even _more_ hyper if you give them enough sugar."

"Er...no." Gin linked her arms through each of theirs, and started dragging them away, calling back to her brothers over her shoulder, "Fred, George, if Dad asks, tell him I'm with Harry and Blaise. We're going to find sane people to hang out with, thanks, bye!"

Harry looked back to see Sirius waving at them, and Mira giving them an overly-exaggerated _why have you betrayed me_ look. "Is she really going to be mad we're leaving her alone with them?"

Not that he actually wanted to stick around himself, especially if they were going to start doing the totally inappropriate flirting thing again. Harry suspected that Lyra had no idea how creepy it sounded when Sirius said shite like _that_, and she just went along, playing into it. Sirius probably _did_, if only because he didn't make that sort of joke when he was just talking to Harry or Blaise — or even Mira, and they were actually sleeping together!

_Yeah, well, she'd already know how big it is, wouldn't she_, Blaise thought at him, shot through with teasing amusement.

Harry did his level best to ignore him, much like he tried to ignore Sirius saying shite that he _really_ shouldn't be saying to any fourteen-year-old girl, and especially not one who was also his bloody cousin! Even if _she_ didn't seem to mind, it made everyone around them _really uncomfortable_. Well, everyone but Mira. And Blaise... Okay, maybe it just made Harry uncomfortable, but _still_! He was _pretty sure_ he wasn't the weird one, here! He was just _surrounded by crazy people_.

_You love it, don't lie._ "Mira's a big girl, she can take care of herself."

"Yeah, and it's not like the twins are going to abandon her, they've been wanting to meet Sirius for _months_ — apparently he's like their fucking hero, or something?"

Harry dragged his mind back to the conversation (away from the reason Black incest jokes were a _thing_) with a bit of effort. "Er, yeah, he and my dad were big pranksters when they were at school. Professor Lupin, too, I guess. Called themselves the Marauders."

"Dorks," Blaise smirked, leading them off down one of the main thoroughfares between tents, apparently at random. _Well, was there somewhere you wanted to go, specifically?_ (There wasn't.) "So, Gin, how's _Justin_?" he said, his tone implying that there was something going on between the two of them, though Harry was _pretty sure_ she hadn't even noticed Justin's (kind of pathetic) crush on her.

Her response only confirmed that impression. "Oh, he's fine, never mind him — where have _you_ two been all summer? You _do_ know that Dumbledore flipped out over you disappearing, told everyone you were dead? And then that you weren't, but the damage was already done."

"Er...yeah, I did know that." And he was still determined not to care, because Lyra was right that he deserved a holiday, and even if he didn't he shouldn't have to stay with the fucking _Dursleys_, and Blaise was right that he didn't owe Magical Britain shite, and the people he cared about wouldn't believe he was dead if Blaise and Lyra told them he wasn't. "We've been in California."

"Well, would it've killed you to come back for a day or two and show everyone you're alive? I mean, _Mum_ still thinks you might be dead. She and Ron didn't believe me when I told them Hermione was right about Black faking the whole thing."

"Most people don't know Lyra that well," Blaise pointed out.

"Well, _yeah_, I _guess_, but—"

"Wait, Hermione actually _told_ people that Lyra faked my death?" Obviously Lyra hadn't said anything about that specifically, since she would've had to admit that she'd _faked his death,_ but Harry was _pretty sure_ she hadn't been really annoyed with Hermione at any point during the summer. She wasn't really subtle when she _was_. He'd been treated to more than one rant about Narcissa Malfoy _totally_ spoiling Draco, for example. (Knowing that Lyra was really Bellatrix Lestrange's daughter made a lot of things about the way she talked about the Malfoys make a _lot_ more sense.) And they were kind of dating now, so he couldn't really believe Hermione had done anything Lyra really didn't want her to.

"Er...yeah. It was in the Quibbler. Xeno Lovegood put out a Special Edition, scooped Dumbledore's retraction — about half the bloody country is blaming her for all the political shite that's happened since then."

"Political shite?" Harry hadn't really heard much of _anything_ about politics all summer — Lyra had been editing their post so that he wouldn't find out that people thought he might be dead — which had been nice, because he _really_ didn't care about any of it, but if people were blaming Hermione for it... _That_ he was pretty sure he cared about.

It was bad enough when the papers and all the idiots at Hogwarts were blaming _him _for shite he had bugger all to do with, and he wasn't even a muggleborn with no money or connections to speak of (which was the sort of thing he _wished_ didn't matter, but in Magical Britain, it _definitely_ did). And Dumbledore was..._Dumbledore_. He was the most powerful wizard in the whole bloody country, there was no reason the press and the public wouldn't just go ahead and _massacre_ some random muggleborn girl who came out and said he was wrong, even if she was absolutely right about it. "Is Hermione okay?"

He'd gotten a couple of letters from her, and she hadn't _said_ anything — she'd sounded fine when they talked on the phone last week, though they hadn't spoken very _long_...and if Lyra could find some way to keep articles about Harry and Dumbledore out of their newspapers — which she _had_, it wasn't as though he hadn't seen a paper _at all_ over the summer — she could definitely edit Hermione's letters, and the idea that she would even hesitate to because _who the fuck does shite like that_ was laughable, so...

_I'm sure she's fine, Harry. They might be insulting her in the papers and shite, but I'm sure Andi's made it known that anyone who fucks with her is fucking with the House of Black, so they won't do anything more than that. Probably won't even print anything _too _bad._

That was..._kind of_ reassuring.

Less so because Gin just groaned. "Haven't you been reading the papers?"

"Lyra's been cutting all the political fallout out of them, she doesn't know Harry knows about her faking his death," Blaise explained. "I don't actually know much about it, either. Mira's mostly only said anything about the shite the Department of Education's gotten done because of it, so..."

"_Ugh_, fine, I'll fill you in..."

So they wandered around aimlessly for what seemed like _hours,_ talking about basically all of Magical British politics _imploding_ because Harry had decided to go on holiday without telling Dumbledore, and looking at fantastical tents. Which were much less amusing when they were talking about Harry accidentally sparking off a bloody change of government. Or possibly being used to intentionally spark off said political chaos, but he wasn't sure he was willing to give Lyra _that_ much credit for the whole debacle. (Even if she would probably take it, given half a chance.)

Gin was halfway through a tangent about her family getting seats in the top box with them because of some favor Mr. Weasley had done for Ludo Bagman, the Head of the Department of Games and Sports (Harry had no idea how they'd even gotten on the subject), when they wandered into what _had_ to be the _Irish_ Irish camp — the tents were covered with _living shamrocks_, and there suddenly wasn't a person in sight who was wearing anything _other_ than green and white.

"Ginny?" a boy's voice called, interrupting her. They turned to see Seamus Finnegan waving at them from beside a nearby fire, sitting with Dean Thomas and...and _Ron_.

Harry froze. It had been _months_ since he'd spoken to Ron. He'd written letters, of course, but Ron had never written back. Gin said he didn't know what to say, that he was embarrassed, or something, that he'd been pulled out of school. Blaise said he didn't know what to say because he resented Harry having a life without him, but didn't want to say so, because that would mean their friendship was _definitely_ over. Harry preferred Gin's explanation, obviously. He still wasn't sure what Blaise's deal was with Ron. (It occurred to him that he might be good enough at legilimency now to try to figure that out, he'd have to try the next time they actually sat down to practice.)

"See, I told you it was her," Seamus said to Ron, who glared at her as they made their way over, Harry in a bit of a daze.

"Ginny! What are you doing wandering around with _Zabini_? Dad told you to stay with Fred and George!"

"Way to sound like Percy, arsehole. If _you_ can go off by yourself, I don't see why I shouldn't be allowed. Hi, Seamus, Dean. You know Blaise Zabini, right?"

("_I'm_ a year older, than you! And, well...")

("_I_ didn't get kicked out of school, and if you say it's because I'm a girl, I'll hex your balls off.")

"We've met," Blaise said drily. "Finnegan, Thomas, Weasley. This is John, he's—"

"Oh, knock it off, Blaise, they're going to—"

"_Harry_?" Dean interrupted.

_That. We _do _share a bloody dorm room, you know._ Harry would've been more surprised if they _hadn't_ recognised him the second he opened his mouth.

"Hi, guys."

"_Harry_?" Ron echoed him, completely distracted from his bickering with his sister. "Blimey, I didn't even recognise you, all dressed up like... Who are you supposed to be, anyway? Malfoy's bloody cousin?"

Harry shrugged uncomfortably, though that _did_ fit just _perfectly _with Lyra's and Gin's observations.

Blaise flung an arm around his shoulders, as he tended to do. "You should've seen him when we made him blond. Really, I think it turned out pretty well. Much less _French prostitute_ than Darling Draco."

Ron tried to glare at him, but couldn't quite manage it. In all fairness, Lyra's description of Malfoy looking like a French prostitute always made Harry snigger a bit, too.

"Still kinda girly, though," Dean noted.

"I just didn't want people to be all over me, what with, you know, the whole thing with Dumbledore. I'm not dead, by the way."

"Never thought you were, mate," Ron said loyally, even as Seamus offered them a seat, gesturing at a couple of logs which were obviously going to be thrown on the fire eventually, but in the meanwhile would make perfectly serviceable stools, turned up on end.

"You are such a bad liar," Gin scoffed. "And it doesn't look that bad, Harry, just, you know, really old-fashioned."

"So...where've you been all summer?" Ron asked, blatantly ignoring her.

"Yeah, there's all kinds of rumors going around, like you getting kidnapped by Fenrir Greyback while you were on holiday in Germany."

"_What_?"

Gin rolled her eyes. "Oh, you know how people just make shite up for the _Prophet_. No one believes them, not really. Hermione's letter in the _Quibbler_ said you were on holiday with the Blacks."

"Didn't say where, though." Dean leaned in, clearly anticipating a good story.

So Harry found himself sitting around a fire at the World Cup, filling his roommates in on some of the more...normal stories that had happened over the summer, telling them about exploring Los Angeles and visiting a muggle amusement park for his birthday and the night they had taken age potions and gone to a concert, uncomfortably aware that Ron was getting more and more irritated, over there on the other side of Seamus, though honestly, he had no idea _why_. (And he definitely wasn't going to go poking around in his mind to find out, even if Ron probably wouldn't notice.)

This must be, he thought, what Blaise meant when he complained about people _thinking too loudly_. Harry was good enough at occlumency to stop himself just _overhearing_ most of the shite random passers-by were thinking, and everyone he ever really talked to was good enough at occlumency to stop themselves projecting their emotions all over the place. But it was absolutely _impossible_ to sit here and ignore the cloud of _resentment_ growing around Ron.

He was halfway through telling them about going to an early premiere of a _really_ bad comedy movie — the future late Mister Zabini got them tickets, apparently he was someone important in Hollywood, though Harry still didn't know exactly what he did — when he decided he couldn't take it anymore. "So, Sirius decided that sounded like the sort of thing he'd like a lot more than Lyra, and she wasn't even there, anyway, and—" He cut himself off to glare at his _ex_-best mate. "Okay, Ron, what the hell is up with you?"

Everyone else turned to look at Ron, too, obviously confused. Well, aside from Blaise, who was just vaguely amused, like he almost always was — he just raised an eyebrow at Harry, his lips twitching slightly in a badly-suppressed smirk. _I'm not saying _I told you so_, but..._

_Oh, shut up, Blaise._

"What the hell is up with _me_? What the hell is up with _you_, Harry? _You're_ the one who– who spent the whole summer letting the entire country think you were _dead_ so you could run around fucking _Hollywood_ acting like a spoilt fucking nob!" he scoffed. "I mean, I _was_ joking about you looking like Malfoy, but... It's like I don't even _know_ you anymore!"

Harry bit his tongue on his first response, but then decided to say it anyway. "Yeah, well, that's what happens when you drop out of school and fucking _disappear_."

"Oh, yeah, because you've been trying _so_ hard to keep in touch!"

"_Ha_! Like _you_ can talk! I wrote you _four_ letters! You _never_ wrote back! I can take a fucking hint, _Ron_."

Ron flushed, but didn't apologise, or even offer an explanation — Harry half expected he'd say it was like when Dobby had been intercepting Harry's post, that Mrs. Weasley wasn't letting him write. But no. "You've still been spending all your time hanging out with Black and Zabini and not giving a single shite that we all thought you were fucking _kidnapped_ or something — you were just having a _grand_ old time, living it up! Nice, being rich, is it?"

Harry felt his eyes narrow, entirely involuntarily. "When have I _ever_ cared about _money_, Ron? I'd've camped out with the ghoul in your attic if it meant I didn't have to go back to the Dursleys! But somehow, I don't think your mum would've told Dumbledore to fuck off so I wouldn't have to be locked in my bedroom for half the summer—" Lyra _had_. Harry had been vaguely horrified when Sirius had told him about it, but it _was_ probably the nicest thing anyone had _ever_ done for him. "—and I _know_ Hermione and Lyra told him that we were just going on holiday!" It was hardly _Harry's_ fault Dumbledore had gone and told everyone he was dead without actually checking first!

Ron, if anything, only grew more furious. "Lyra, Lyra, Lyra! Just because you fancy her doesn't make her fucking _perfect_, you know! I've got news for you, Harry — do you want to know who she really is? I mean _really_?"

Was he really going to...?

_Yeah_, Blaise thought at him, accompanied by a wave of resigned annoyance.

"Bellatrix fucking Lestrange, Harry! She's not just her daughter, she's _actually her_. Dumbledore told mum, she's _evil_, and you've just been letting her run your fucking _life_, and—"

And right now, Harry was really starting to get why Lyra cut people off with that stupid silencing jinx all the time. "Shut up."

"Yeah, if someone told the Harry Potter _I_ know that he was living with a fucking Death Eater, he wouldn't just _sit there_ staring like a fucking _Zabini_—" He gestured at Blaise, who _was_ staring at him, his face _completely_ emotionless, which probably meant he was thinking of horrible curses he could use on Ron, but didn't want Ron to know he was getting to him. The fact that he didn't respond and wouldn't let Harry peek into his mind to check only reinforced that suspicion.

"Oh, you _want_ to piss me off? Fine! I said _shut up_, Ron! She's not _actually Lestrange_, I don't care _what_ Dumbledore told your mum, I know _exactly_ who she is, and she's not the same person, she didn't do _any _of the shite Lestrange did! She's not a fucking _Death Eater_, she's not _evil_, or _using me_, or whatever you think— She might be fucking crazy, but she's done a hell of a lot more for me than Dumbledore ever has! And she's _not_ running my life, and I _don't_ fancy her, okay! She's my fucking _cousin_!"

"Oh, like that's ever stopped a fucking Black!"

"Aren't your parents second cousins, Weasley?" Blaise pointed out, his tone so light and _normal_ in contrast with the way he'd closed his mind off that Harry had to do a double take.

"Fuck off, Zabini! This has nothing to do with _you_!"

"Doesn't it? Some people would call Lyra my sister, you know. Reciprocal godparents, and all that. Would it be your business if I were to call Gin, there, an evil Death Eater?"

"You already call me a _violent heathen child_, Zabini," Gin interjected.

"Hush, Red. I'm _trying_ to make a _point_ here. I can hardly sit by while this idiot insults the reputation of a girl who might as well be my sister, can I?"

"Since when is telling the truth an insult?!"

"Since it's not _true_?" he suggested, his tone still unnervingly mild. "Keep up, Weasley. And if you don't want to end up in a dueling circle, pissing yourself in fear like Darling Draco, keep your lies to yourself."

"I'm not afraid of _you_!"

"No, you envy me. I have everything you only _wish_ you had. Money. Influence. _Harry_. You hate me for being smarter than you and more popular, which, seriously? That's a _really_ low bar, Weasley. People don't _like_ me. And you hate _yourself_ for wishing you were more like a slimy snake, and your mother for taking you away from Hogwarts and the only thing you had going for you — your friendship with _the_ Harry Potter — and Harry _himself_ for destroying your pretty little delusion of having _some_ degree of importance to..._anyone_, simply by _having his own life_.

"You _are_ afraid of Lyra, though. Don't blame you, really — any sane person would be. She could, after all, have grown up to become Bellatrix Lestrange, in another life. You _certainly_ wouldn't—"

"Blaise, that's enough," Harry said firmly. Angry as he might be with Ron, _nobody_ deserved to have Blaise tear them apart. (He'd seen memories. They weren't pretty.) Plus, it was only a matter of time until Ron tried to curse him, or even just hit him, and then they'd all be in trouble, because Harry didn't think he could just _let_ him, no matter how much of a shite Blaise was being to him.

"What? Apparently it's not an insult to say true things." He managed to say that entirely straight-faced, but ruined any chance of Harry thinking he actually believed it by immediately smirking like the world's biggest, most self-satisfied arse.

"Not funny," Harry informed him. "Knock it off."

Blaise raised an eyebrow at him. _Are you sure?_

Yes_, Blaise, I'm sure. Let's just go back to the tent — get lunch, or take a nap, or something._

"If you insist." He rose to his feet with the same unnatural grace he always had, and then, before Harry even realised what he was _doing_, wrapped an arm around his waist and _kissed him on the mouth_, _right in front of all of them_.

And then shot a smug grin at Ron, clearly aware of his disgust (_But he's a _Slytherin_! And a _bloke_! That's just _wrong_!_) and Harry's reflexive annoyance — what business did _Ron_ have, judging him for snogging Blaise? Granted, Blaise had _definitely_ just done that to piss him off, but what if they'd still been mates? Ron would still have thought the idea of Harry snogging a (male) Slytherin completely repulsive. Even if he'd gotten a _girlfriend _who _wasn't_ a Slytherin — Hermione or, say...Cho Chang, for example — Ron still wouldn't have been happy with him. Blaise was right, he hated the very _idea_ of having to share Harry with anyone, and that was just...creepy as hell, honestly.

_See what I meant?_ Blaise asked, tugging at the memory of their last conversation about Ron, on the train. Which was _dangerously_ close to an _I told you so_.

"Do try to keep my advice in mind, won't you, Weasley?" he said, over Ginny's delighted squeal and clapping and the others' shock, the faintest trace of sarcasm on his voice. He nodded in farewell to the others, smoothly turning to go without releasing Harry's waist — _he_ might be shite at the whole dancing thing (Lyra had decided to teach him, in preparation for the Triwizard Tournament ball thing that was still _six months away_), but Blaise was _really_ good.

(He and Lyra had done a tango for him one afternoon, just showing off, which was definitely _not_ the sort of dance you did with your sister — Harry was pretty sure that whole bit had just been an excuse for Blaise to take over his fight with Ron, because he didn't want Harry to get hurt, or some stupid thing—)

"Am I really so transparent?" he murmured, almost laughing. "By the way, I hope you weren't having second thoughts about snogging me, because I'm _pretty sure_ everyone's going to know we're a thing before the train gets to Hogwarts if Gin has anything to say about it..."

There were advantages, Harry decided, to dating a legilimens. The biggest one _obviously_ being that he didn't actually have to find words to tell him that no, he was kind of embarrassed, but definitely not having second thoughts — but was that really _necessary_?

_Oh yes, definitely necessary. So, lunch? Something _not _toasted on a stick, maybe?_

_Sounds great._

* * *

The second the swirling chaos of portkey travel shuddered to an abrupt halt, the Irish delegation all tumbled to the ground, their Saoirse escorts left standing over them.

She let out a snort, bent over to offer Michael a hand up. "See what I mean?"

For a brief moment he scowled up at her, hard green eyes simmering with annoyance, black hair almost comically tousled from the portkey. Then he let out an irritated sigh, took her hand, popped back up to his feet.

And Michael Cavan, Tánaiste of the Republic of Ireland, had arrived for the final of the Quidditch World Cup.

Síomha still wasn't certain this was a good idea, bringing a delegation from the Irish muggle government here. No, that wasn't true — she _knew_ it wasn't a good idea, she'd known from the beginning. But they'd done it anyway, because apparently everyone in both Saoirse's leadership council and the Republic's Department of Foreign Affairs had gone completely insane.

It had come up incidentally, discussing arrangements for their delegation to Hogwarts for the bloody Triwizard Tournament, that the World Cup was being held in Alba, and that the Irish National team would be playing. Fionn had then had to explain why exactly Éire got a national quidditch team despite not being independent on the magical side, which had taken some doing, a bit about how large of an event it was by magical standards, blah blah.

Apparently, once they'd gotten the picture of it, Niall (one of Michael's people) had pointed out that, much like the 1913 Treaty of Anglesey required the magical officials to invite their non-magical counterparts to international events like the Triwizard Tournament, shouldn't they be invited to the World Cup too? _especially_ if "their" team was playing? Fionn had said he'd been completely blindsided because, _yes_, the Ministry _was_ required to invite both the Republic and the United Kingdom to send a delegation — the former because it was "their" team (and that was only somewhat sarcastic, three of the starters were muggleborns, they were legitimately Irish citizens) and the latter because it was technically being held on their soil — and this had somehow never occurred to him, to any of them.

The Republic's ambassador to the UK then did a bit of poking around and, _apparently_, the Ministry had invited the British government to send someone — they'd elected not to — but, _apparently_, it had slipped their minds that they were obligated by treaty to involve the Irish government as well. _Again_.

Síomha hadn't been in the room at the time, but she'd been told that when his people had informed the Tánaiste just how the Republic had been snubbed by the magical government, _again_, Michael had insisted they'd be sending a delegation without direct Ministry involvement, _again_, and if the Ministry didn't like it they could just go fuck themselves. He'd also insisted (over protest) that he'd be going himself — which seemed like overkill, the Tánaiste personally leading an official diplomatic delegation to a bloody quidditch game, but what did she know — mostly because he was furious, and he knew the Minister and Crouch would be there, and he wasn't going to skip out on an opportunity to give them both a piece of his mind.

And now they were here in the middle of the portkey receiving field, the muggles picking themselves off the grass with hands up from mages in Saoirse's small (but growing) militia, and it was really too late to do anything to stop it. But Síomha still couldn't shake the feeling that this was a terrible, _terrible_ idea. This was going to go wrong, she just knew it, and it was going to go _spectacularly_ wrong.

She had to admire the stones Michael had, but the fiery-mouthed politician was going to get himself killed at this rate.

(But not if she had anything to say about it. He really _was_ growing on her.)

"Heads up," came a soft, whispered voice — Fionn had found his way back to Síomha already, unpleasantly light magic hot and tense in the air, restrained an instant from action. His hair had only been slightly tousled by the portkey trip, black curls now visibly asymmetrical, his face absent his usual crooked smile looking all too narrow and sharp. "We have company incoming."

Síomha started, glanced around the portkey receiving field. They were in what appeared to be a large patch of cleared woodland, framed with forest, rising up into hills in the far distance. Rather nearer, separated by the occasional narrow band of brush and tree, were craggy fields of peaked tents in a shifting rainbow of colour — she noticed a hint of lensing, a sign of space expansion wards in effect.

She could tell even from here that everyone was doing a _terrible_ job at pretending to be muggles. They were supposed to, technically, but she hadn't expected the order would actually do any good — most mages probably didn't even know _how_ to act convincingly muggle — and the Ministry agreed, posting several teams of Obliviators to the site around the clock. According to the rumours leaking out of London, there had been multiple near misses, where some random muggle around the fringes had caught wind of something _obviously_ unnatural, almost slipped away before anyone noticed. Minor leaks did happen all the time, there was a small subculture of muggles who were convinced _something_ was going on, even sometimes suspiciously accurate in the details, and Síomha wouldn't be surprised if this event gave them a few tidbits more to work with.

The Statute of Secrecy really was doomed to fail. It could _maybe_ be maintained for longer if people didn't keep insisting on doing big events out in the open like this one, and weren't so _terrible_ at covering it up when they did. But even if muggle technology remained exactly as it was now, the slow drip of leaks would out them given enough time. They were really fighting the inevitable at this point.

But anyway, it didn't take Síomha long to spot what Fionn had: approaching them through the grid of roped off little blocks — individual portkey landing sites, two more groups had popped in even as their muggle friends recovered — were a pair of harried-looking men. Both were _mostly_ pulling off muggle dress (those over-large galoshes one was wearing didn't really go with the tweed), carrying thick rolls of parchment. The arrivals schedule, presumably.

Síomha leaned into Michael a bit, nodded toward the approaching men. "Those two are probably with the Department of Games and Sports, going to ask us who the hell we are."

"Right." Shrugging off the last of his visible disorientation, Michael stood somewhat straighter, his moue of irritation vanishing behind an empty politician's smile. "Let's get this show going, then." Under his easy good cheer, there was just a hint of vicious glee — the subtlest of hints that Michael knew he was neither expected nor welcome, and he was going to enjoy making Fudge and his people squirm.

(He was probably going to get himself killed one of these days, but he really _was_ growing on her.)

Michael's party — Niamh, one of Máire's deputies (the only one of the muggles who spoke Gaelic), Alex, a younger bloke on Michael's staff whose exact duties Síomha never had picked up on, and two looming plain-clothes bodyguards Michael had been talked into bringing along named Breandán and James — and the magical escort they'd put together — Síomha and Fionn, Clíodhna, Ciarán, and Muirín — had just left the roped-off block they'd appeared in when the two men finally got to them. They looked even more overwrought close up than they had at a distance, faces flushed and eyes shadowed.

"Ten thirty from Slievemore?" one asked, slightly out of breath.

"That would be us."

The man speaking for the pair (the one with the galoshes), gave Michael a double-take. Probably didn't know quite what to make of him — he was wearing jeans and trainers, the tee shirt half-hidden under his gold and green National Team scarf bearing the rose of the Socialist International (because Michael Cavan had no patience for subtlety). He did look rather peculiar for a mage...or for a muggle politician, for that matter — sometimes Síomha wondered if Michael realised _he was the deputy prime minister of an entire bloody country_, honestly — at least for one his age. Mostly only younger people could convincingly dress muggle-ish and, being a muggle in his thirties, Michael looked rather too old to magical eyes.

Whatever the man was thinking, he brushed it off, turning back to the scroll in his hands. "Er, we only had three people signed on to this trip. Fionn Ingham, Michael Cavan, and Síomha...Ní Ailbhe..." He trailed off, eyes flicking over the women in their group, and then lingering on their clothes, blinking in surprise. Síomha and the other mages were all made up in a uniform invented for the occasion — brown and yellow duelling leathers badly hidden with cloaks in green and white. He probably didn't know what to make of them either.

"That's us, sure. We picked up a few friends who wanted to come along since we registered, see."

The Ministry man gave Michael a flat, doubtful look at that. He clearly didn't believe him. He clearly thought they were up to something. He had, clearly, recognised Síomha's name — not that she was surprised, she had gotten more than a few less-than-flattering mentions in the _Prophet_. He'd probably assumed they were all with Saoirse, and (correctly) assumed they were up to something.

He also, clearly, decided this was not his problem. "Right, you'll want to talk to Mr. Roberts. That way," he said, pointing off to the right, toward one of the fields of tents. He firmly turned his back on them, gesturing to his partner, and the pair of them walked off.

Michael turned a cocked eyebrow to Síomha. "Ministry overworking those boys, you think?"

Somehow, she managed not to snort at Michael calling them _boys_ — they both had to be twice his age. "Ah, probably. Running a keyport at this scale, even an informal one like this, should call for more than those two sorry sods."

She must have said something weird, because Michael just stared at her for a moment, his lips twitching with a derisive scowl. "You take a portkey...to a keyport."

"Hey now, don't look at me, I don't make this shite up. English isn't even my native language, you know."

Michael shook his head, turned to lead the way off without another word.

At the edge of one of the endless fields of tents was a little stone hut — a simple thing, probably didn't have the insulation to handle a proper winter (assuming it was muggle-built, which seemed a pretty good guess). The man leaning against the doorframe clinched it. Síomha supposed he could have simply done a better job of blending in than most, but the canvas trousers and jumper, the suspicious look directed out at the field, something about him screamed _muggle_ at her.

"Oh, hello there," he said as they approached, slowly turning to face them. "You lot checking in, then?" His voice sounded off, somehow, drifting and unfocused.

Michael strode ahead to meet him, all smiles and handshakes, but Síomha was getting a bad feeling. A glance at Fionn, the hard look he gave her, and she knew he was having the same thought she was.

"You mean, _the_ Michael Cavan? The Irish politician?"

"That's the one. Heard of me, have you?" There was an obvious note of irony on his voice — Michael was rather controversial, apparently, by this point Síomha knew enough to doubt anyone who caught much of the news at all wouldn't have heard of him, even in Britain.

"I might have done." The odd, absent feeling about the man (Mr. Roberts, presumably) lightened for a moment, matching Michael's good humour. Then he went quiet again, gaze drifting back over the packed field. "What is going on here..."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know, it's weird. We never get this many people in, and pre-bookings and... There's a lot of foreigners about, and weirdos, you know? Not that I'm calling you a weirdo, sir, but some of these folk..." He turned back to them, shooting the mages among them narrow looks — though, Síomha noticed, his eyes seemed just _slightly_ out of focus.

He wasn't in the know. Son of a _bitch_, they had a muggle managing the campgrounds, and he _wasn't in the know_. Who the fuck thought _that_ was a good idea? He'd been staring out there and apparently hadn't noticed anything too obviously magical, they must have a muggle-aversion ward over the entire site — Michael and the others were wearing anti-anti-muggle charms, Fionn had thought it prudent just in case — but even if he were never obliviated being in such close contact with aversion wards started having strange effects on the mind very quickly.

And if they _had_ been obliviating him...

Oh, Michael wasn't going to take this well. He wasn't going to take this well _at all_.

Apparently, he was figuring it out already, building rage reducing Michael's voice to a thick whisper. "You mean you don't know?"

"Don't know what? Is there some kind of government thing going on here, or—"

At that moment, a man in somewhat dated but otherwise convincing muggle dress appeared out of thin air — instantly, with no noise of apparation, must have simply canceled concealment charms. His wand was already out, fixed directly at Roberts's head. "_Obli—_"

Michael, the marvelous madman that he was, reached forward to grab Roberts by the neck of his jumper, and yanked him forward. The memory charm, visible only as a subtle shimmer of distortion on the air, missed Roberts by a hair.

"_Bloody_—" Roberts recovered his balance quickly, whirled back around. "What the hell was _that?!_ Where did _you_ come from?!"

"Are you fecking _insane_?! How many times have you made a hames of this man's head by now?"

The Obliviator — a light-haired middle-aged man, looking _very_ exhausted, dark shadows framing his eyes, clothes rumpled and stubble darkening his chin — shot Michael a hard glare. "Just doing my job, sir. Mind getting out of my way?"

"No chance _in hell_ am I doing that." A hand on Roberts's shoulder, Michael muttered, "Behind me, Daniel. Keep to the middle, you'll be fine."

It was obvious by the wild look to Roberts's eyes, the twitch in his fingers, that he had absolutely no idea what was going on. But it was also obvious that didn't matter — from context, he could probably guess he was being protected by the _bloody Tánaiste_ of the _fucking Irish Republic_, and that was good enough for him. He ducked behind Michael, firmly placing himself in the middle of the group. He gave their dueling clothes another once-over, marking them as part of whatever the weirdness going on here was, shifted closer to Breandán with a firm shake of his head.

"Look, I just do what I'm told. I'm certain the muggle'll be fine when we're done here."

"Oh, _you're certain_, are you? I may not know all that much about magic, but _that_ spell is one they tell us all about! I _know_ what repeated exposure can do to a person! You know there are _dozens_ of people in mental care with their long-term memory shot to hell — I don't know what you _think_ you're—"

"Wait, what do you mean, you don't know much about magic? Are you a _muggle_?"

From this angle, Síomha couldn't see Michael's face, but she did catch his hands clench into fists, his shoulders square. "I am so, and what of it?"

The Obliviator stared at him for a moment, mouth open and eyes blinking, before turning an incredulous look on Clíodhna — she was the oldest of their group, and had a sort of calm, dignified look to her, he was probably assuming she was in charge. "What are you doing, bringing muggles here?"

"Our job." He turned to stare at Síomha now, she had to hold in the urge to smirk at him. That would probably be more provocative than necessary. "The Republic of Ireland is entitled to send a representative to this event, if they wish to do so. The _Tánaiste_ here thought it wise to arrange magical escort, just in case. His government asked Saoirse Ghaelach, and we said yes."

"Saoirse..." The man glanced between Síomha, Fionn, and the others, his already pasty face paling a bit further. "Fuck me, you're Síomha Ní Ailbhe."

This time, Síomha entirely failed to hold in a smirk. "Pleasure, I'm sure."

Apparently deciding this was above his pay-grade, the Obliviator cast a messenger charm, a flicker of green light zipping off into the distance. A bare handful of seconds later, and there was a staccato burst of apparation, and they were surrounded by figures in black and blue, dragon leather gleaming under heavy cloaks.

Síomha snorted — she hadn't realised them just showing up rated a whole team of Hit Wizards. She'd be flattered if it weren't such a ridiculous overreaction.

The next few minutes made up one of the most irritating experiences of her entire life. The Hit Wizard captain, a surly man named Nettles, insisted Síomha hand over Roberts to be obliviated. Michael, of course, told him he'd be doing no such thing, and Nettles would get a superior over here because their treatment of Roberts was _well_ in excess of muggle protection laws, and they would be doing something to remedy the situation immediately. (Síomha was slightly impressed Michael could quote the pertinent statutes verbatim, he must have done some reading to prepare for the Tournament.) Nettles was in the middle of asking just who the hell he was — the Obliviator had only pointed out Síomha, seemingly not realising she wasn't actually in charge here — when the cottage door opened, and a girl of about ten stumbled out, rambling on about something to do with butter and going into town.

And things abruptly got about ten times more tense. One of the Hit Wizards turned to stun the girl, and Michael's hand clamped down on Síomha's shoulder, but she didn't even have time to move. She also didn't need to: Fionn had summoned the kid already, the girl letting out a squeal as she was yanked out of the path of the hex. (Oh for two, Ministry people just couldn't seem to tag muggles with anything today.) The girl, sounding more excited than frightened, was handed off to her father, and the Hit Wizards were yelling at them, and Michael was telling them to go find someone who wasn't _just doing my job_ and might actually possibly be at all useful.

At some point, the Hit Wizards had _actually drawn their wands_ — on _Michael_, who, remember, was a _bloody foreign dignitary_. (And also a muggle, which seemed important to note, it wasn't like he was any kind of threat.) Síomha really, _really_ didn't want to have to do this, but she had a job to do here, and the Hit Wizards weren't giving her a whole lot of choice. She drew her own wand, stepping in front of Michael — he kept shouting at Nettles over her shoulder, of course, she wouldn't expect anything else — a subtle, tingling weight (and how wide the Hit Wizards' eyes had gone) telling her Fionn had started casting palings. He wouldn't activate them yet, not unless and until they were needed, but he _did_ prefer to use runic casting for these things, so it would be very obvious.

Runic casting was, naturally, restricted, but it hardly mattered. They couldn't check if he was licensed right now (he wasn't), and arresting a member of a Noble and Most Ancient House over something so minor would be a bit idiotic. There _were_ advantages to bringing Fionn Ingham along.

(She would have in any case, but the Brits were silly about the Seventeen Founders.)

As much as ensuring their charges were protected was really quite reasonable, the Hit Wizards took it as aggression. (To be fair, that _did_ make a kind of sense, they probably couldn't tell what the runes were for.) There was a lot more shouting, which seemed to involve mostly demands to surrender, and Michael trying to remind them who he was, and that they legally had no right to detain him. (Síomha could have told him that wouldn't get anywhere — most mages didn't give a shite about muggles, no matter who they were.) While the argument devolved further and further, Síomha mostly ignored it, analysing the Hit Wizards and their relative positions, the layout of their surroundings. Planning potentially needing to fight their way out.

Normally, getting out would be easy — there weren't any transportation wards over the area, they could just apparate out. But with Michael and his people... One of them would probably need to make a portkey. They did all have emergency portkeys — the muggles, that is, her people didn't — but Síomha would rather reserve those in case something went catastrophically wrong. Fionn's palings would give them some time, but they'd still need to buy a minute to prepare. They were outnumbered five to seven (not counting the muggle bodyguards), and against Hit Wizards, which would be terrible odds...if two of those five weren't Fionn and herself. They could probably take a whole Hit Wizard team by themselves if they really needed to, but not while defending a single point. Also, Fionn was the best with portkeys, so as soon as his palings were up he should do that. Perhaps, if she and Ciarán crossed the palings and fought at close range, tried to draw them away, and Clíodhna and Muirín stayed to cover Fionn, Michael, and the rest, they could keep them confused long enough to—

"Whoa now, what's all this?" Síomha glanced at the newcomer, dismissing him as an onlooker and therefore not a threat, before turning to—

She jumped, did a double-take. Son of a bitch, that was Sirius Black. She hadn't recognised him at first — they never had actually met before, but he didn't look anything like he had in the pictures she'd seen. He'd been seriously fucked up from over a decade in Azkaban at first, yes, but he'd had a few public appearances since then, where he..._mostly_ passed as a proper British lord. (Apparently, the illusion broke whenever he opened his mouth, but he did know how to look the part.) He looked a bit absurd, honestly, in jeans and a shirt in the Team's colours; even as Síomha watched Mullet's name was replaced with Troy's, apparently it was cycling through the members of the Team.

Somehow, it hadn't occurred to Síomha that Lord bloody Black would be supporting the Gaels. Sure, it was just a sporting event, but...

"Stay back, sir, you don't want to get involved in this."

Black grinned at Nettles, grey eyes sparkling in the light of Fionn's runes. "That's quite an assumption you're making there. What's going on here, anyway, did I hear something about obliviating someone?"

"The people without the cloaks in there are muggles, I think." This came from another newcomer, a school-aged girl in Gaelic colours, though without any obvious quidditch branding. The two shared an obvious resemblance, the same narrow faces and curly black hair — this must be Lyra Black, then, the same teenage girl Dumbledore had gotten to send out those letters for him. (They had no confirmation that Dumbledore had been behind the invitations sent to the Republic and the United Kingdom, but it was the only reasonable possibility they could think of.) "Though, not sure who the people _in_ the cloaks are, but that's definitely runic casting, hardly see that from anyone in Britain."

Things then proceeded to get very strange, as the Blacks inserted themselves into the argument between Michael and Nettles — strange because, as unlikely as Síomha would have thought such a thing to be before, the Blacks were _siding with Michael_. Even knowing they were with Saoirse, an organisation trying to remove their people from the authority of the Wizengamot, a body which the _elder Black was a member of_. The younger had seemed absurdly pleased when Nettles had told them who they were, grinning at Síomha and her people with almost unnerving glee.

Lord Black didn't seem much more pleased with how the Ministry had been handling Roberts and his family, glaring at Nettles and the still unnamed Obliviator. After confirming they didn't have a telephone in the house, Black had argued there wasn't any real reason they couldn't leave the Robertses to themselves, and just obliviate them _once_ at the conclusion of the event — the younger Black said something about not seeing why they needed to obliviate them at all, it wasn't like they had any direct evidence, no one would believe them if they went out blabbing about magic. Which, that wasn't as good of a point as she seemed to think it was — there was a critical mass to these things, each bit they let slip increased the chances the Statute could collapse entirely — but the elder Black's argument was so eminently reasonable the Obliviator, after some badgering and a few more subtle insults from Michael, agreed to bring his suggestion into the office, disappeared with a pop.

Of course, even with that out of the way, Nettles still wanted to arrest Síomha's people. Because they'd made aggressive moves directed at officers of the DLE, apparently — which, _that_ was horseshite, but she wasn't particularly surprised. Black didn't even wait for Michael to argue the point first, he was already asking just _what_ they'd done was so provocative; the only thing Nettles could come up with that _wasn't_ bloody stupid was pointing at the runes still hanging in the air, saying that was obviously a threat of some kind.

While they were still arguing about that, there was a soft ripple through the magic around them, something Síomha had only felt once before. Whipping around to look behind her, she found the younger Black had apparently _shadow-walked_ into the middle of their group, peering up at Fionn's runes, still hanging in the air glowing in gentle whites and reds. Now that the girl was standing only a couple feet away, Síomha could feel her magic was dark, _intensely_ dark, deeper and sharper than any she'd felt from a human before. She definitely wasn't a vampire — that was the only time she'd felt someone shadow-walk before, dueling a vampire — but her aura was about as overwhelming as one, if more...volatile? Síomha wasn't sure what she meant to say. The ambient magic around the girl seemed afire, roiling and bouncing and dancing, a sense of motion, of energy most locales didn't show.

It..._sort of_ reminded her of Fionn, actually — dark where he was light, but the feeling of power just barely restrained much the same. Lyra Black couldn't _possibly_ be a black mage, could she?

The girl let out a low hum, ignoring Fionn staring at her tense and wide-eyed, the wands turning on her. "This isn't an external effect — see this string right here, this is definitely a paling of some kind. An isolation ward, looks like, they were probably going to bring it up the instant spells started flying. This is pretty good work, by the way," she said, turning to Fionn. "This you?"

The motion uncharacteristically stiff, Fionn nodded.

"It's not bad. If I were trying to cover muggles, I'd probably use a dissolving filter down-tapping into the wards over the valley, but this would still stop almost everything, and would bleed interference well enough to hold for a while."

"Er... Can't use a dissolving filter. We'd need to make a portkey to get everyone out, and—"

"Right, it'd prevent you from casting those spells, of course. This is probably the best you could do on short notice, then. Very nice."

"...Thanks?"

"So, yeah—" There was another ripple, and the girl reappeared at Black's side. "—not exactly a threat, is it? I mean, look at the way they're standing, they're obviously just protecting the muggles. Which, honestly, you came in threatening to fuck with their people's minds, what did you expect?"

Nettles didn't seem to have a good response for that — at least, not one more sophisticated than _but they're muggles though_.

The standoff continued for a few more moments, if much less tense than it'd been before, with the Blacks acting as mediators and a resolution in sight. The Obliviator returned in a couple minutes, with news that his superiors had signed off on leaving the Robertses alone at least until the mages cleared out. (He looked a bit flustered, had probably just gotten yelled at for failing to contain the situation.) It broke a moment later, the Hit Wizards popping off to whence they'd come.

There was a round of quick explanations to Roberts of what was going on, some assurances from Michael they'd check up on them, hold the authorities to their word. Fionn cast a quick ritual to track the Robertses — it wouldn't _prevent_ an obliviation from taking (except maybe over the children, Bríd might bend the rules a bit there), but it _would_ inform Fionn, so they could come back to break the obliviation and kick up a fuss on their behalf. The grateful muggle finished checking them in, taking a few notes from Breandán, and they were finally starting off again.

They'd hardly gone a couple steps before Michael was turning to Black. "Thanks for the help, Lord..." He'd obviously caught Nettles's use of the title, but didn't recognise him.

"It's Black," the man said, turning to shake Michael's hand. "Call me Sirius, though, I never had much patience for all that _Lord So-and-So_ business. Beyond getting Ministry idiots to piss off, anyway. I never did catch your name, by the way."

"Oh, Michael Cavan, I—"

"Wait, not the _Tánaiste_ Michael Cavan?" They both turned to Lyra, who was staring up at Michael, once again grinning like a maniac. "Like, the _big_ Tánaiste, the one in the muggle Irish Republic?"

"Is there more than one Tánaiste?"

Both Blacks looked slightly confused at the question, so Síomha leaned in to mutter, "Mages use the title in local government."

"Ah. Sure then, the big Tánaiste."

"You'd be the socialist Zee's mentioned, then."

"Might be so, but I don't know who that is."

"Oh, Mirabella Zabini."

Michael jerked to a stop, sudden enough Breandán nearly ran into his back. Whipping around to Síomha, he hissed, "Zabini is a _mage?!_"

Síomha blinked. "You didn't know that?" Now that she thought about it, she'd never mentioned Zabini herself...but she'd sort of assumed he already knew, since he'd been informed about magic. It was very possible, though, that whoever read in muggle officials had a very specific set of information they imparted, major players on the magical side probably weren't included. "Oh, well, she's Director of Education at the Ministry, actually."

"Your people put _Mirabella Zabini_ in charge of _public edu_— Wait, no," Michael cut off, admitted with obvious reluctance, "that _does_ sort of make sense. If you're going to put _Mirabella Zabini_ in government _somewhere_, Education does seem the place. I just can't get over how she's there at all. Did she buy her way in?"

Well, probably...

"Wait, wait," Sirius said, turning back to them, "how do _you_ know Mira? I mean, I know she has some business on the muggle side..."

Michael choked out a harsh scoff. "_Some_ business? Her company is one of the largest employers in the country, near making Cork a company town these days. She's one of the wealthiest people in Ireland, and isn't shy about throwing her money around — _of course_ I know Zabini! How the hell do _you_ know her?"

Sirius shrugged. "She was my favourite cousin's girlfriend growing up." He hadn't said _who_ that favourite cousin was, but it was probably better he hadn't — Síomha would rather not have to explain to Michael exactly how Sirius and Lyra were related to the Blackheart if she could help it. "Lyra here's her goddaughter too, she's been putting us up until we can get one of the old Black places cleaned up enough to live out of."

"Yeah, yeah, we all know Zee here, which shouldn't be a surprise, Zee knows _everyone_. What I want to know about is this socialism thing, Zee didn't explain it very well. Mostly just complained about you being bloody stubborn."

"As though that frustrating woman has _any_ right to talk..."

While Michael and the Blacks went on a long tangent about politics — the younger Black seemed to be finding the idea of social revolution _far_ too entertaining, that probably didn't bode well for anyone — Fionn grabbed her attention with a jerk of his head, she slowed down to give them some thin semblance of privacy. "The girl's a black mage, isn't she?"

Fionn blinked at her for a second. "Oh, er, yes, she is. Not sure who — it'd be someone Greco-Roman through their whole Powers thing, and I don't know that nearly as well as I should."

Síomha didn't either, honestly — she was much more familiar with the older Celtic traditions, which had survived through the centuries in little pockets at the fringes of society. She knew a little bit about the Mistwalkers, but she was most comfortable with the old Gaelic pantheon. It was kind of hard not to be, what with Fionn, one of her best friends, being a priest of Bríd and all. "Any guesses?" He _would_ be able to feel out the quality of Lyra's magic better than Síomha could. Being a priest of Bríd and all.

He shrugged. "A trickster god of some kind? Can't say for sure."

...

The heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black was a black mage...dedicated to _a trickster god?!_

Son of a bitch, things were going to get interesting soon...

"But that's not what I wanted to tell you."

Síomha couldn't quite hold in a dark laugh. "What, you have worse news than that?"

He shrugged. "There's going to be a battle here. Soon."

... Son of a _bitch_. "Is She giving you anything specific?" It wasn't unusual for priests — sometimes all of them, but most particularly of Bríd and Morrígan — to have a... Well, Fionn somewhat sarcastically referred to it as a "sense of doom" — premonitions of violence or death, in the hours or days before an event, sometimes overwhelming and sometimes so subtle they're easy to miss. Most of the time, the event itself can't be _avoided_, but sometimes they can take precautions to get through it better than they might have otherwise. Assuming Bríd was giving him any useful details.

Unfortunately, he just gave her a little helpless shrug. "Not really. I _think_ we're all going to make it out alive, but I can't say more than that. A riot, maybe?"

"Right. If you can find a moment to slip away for an hour or two, see if She'll meet you and give you more. If not, well, we'll just have to be careful, I guess."

"I'll try."

At some point while she and Fionn had been whispering, Michael and the Blacks had moved on to talking about quidditch itself. Now the Blacks were talking about dropping in to meet the Team — after all, Michael was "their" Tánaiste, and Sirius was Lord Black, they should definitely be able to get in, should be interesting. And they were running off to, just, do that, chattering on about muggle–magical relations and bloody pass ratios. Getting on surprisingly well, all things considered, she hadn't seen that coming.

Síomha let out a sigh, slipped back up into Michael's shadow. This was going to be a _long_ bloody day.

* * *

_Merry Christmas, bitches!_

_As a reminder, using my headcanon for the value of a galleon. That means the 35 galleons the Twins are going to win is actually a **lot** of money — the equivalent of some tens of thousands of dollars. The have the five galleons to make the bet because Lyra has been (over)paying them for help on pranks on the like through much of the previous school year. And now Sirius is probably going to end up bankrolling them, so, Twins making serious cash off the Blacks, apparently._

_For people who didn't read the summer side scenes, Harry is referencing several of them here. They're all in there, if you need to catch up._

_One of the scenes in the next chapter is still a hot mess, so, next one will be when we have it._

_—Lysandra_


	4. More Interesting Than Quidditch

_30k words what? And we thought all this and the previous chapter would fit in one. We have problems ha ha..._

_Anyway, have fun. —Lysandra_

* * *

The first thing Bill realised when he and his family _finally_ reached the Top Box — taking the stairs because Dad thought it made the thing more impressive, really showed the _scale_ of it, to climb to the top (though also because it would probably take more time to find the bloody lifts) — was that there was not _nearly_ enough space in here. Between the very annoyed-looking Bulgarian delegation, the Malfoys and a couple other people who must be with Fudge, the Blacks, the Weasleys, and a handful of Ministry officials, they were already about twenty seats short, and that was _without_ considering the presence of...

"Fionn?"

A short, black-haired man at the fringe of the crowd shot him a distracted smile. "Will, how's things?"

Fionn Ingham was about the only member of the third official-looking delegation Bill was familiar with — they'd gone to school together. But he definitely _recognised_ a couple of the others, standing around looking variously annoyed, edgy and/or confrontational. Like Síomha Ní Ailbhe, and the _Tánaiste_ of _muggle Ireland_. "Not to be insufferably rude and abrupt — good to see you, been ages and all that shite — but what the hell's going on here?"

The normally pleasant man shot Fudge's back an absolutely _filthy_ look — which wasn't too much of a surprise, when he thought about it, he'd heard Saoirse had issues with Fudge (to put it mildly). "Oh, nothing much, the Ministry just displaying more of their famous incompetence. _Apparently_, nobody thought to inform the Bulgarians how limited seating was up here, especially with Fudge and Bagman inviting along their favourite dirty cronies by the handful — er, no offence to your dad—"

Bill couldn't really say anything about that. Dad _had_ gotten the invitation to the top box as a _thank you_ for making criminal charges against one of Bagman's relatives..._disappear_. That _was_ dirty, there was no other honest way to look at it.

"—so they used up all the seats meant for the Bulgarian delegation. And then the Tánaiste decided to crash the thing — the Republic does have a right to be here, it's _our_ bloody team, honestly. He _could_ have warned Crouch ahead of time he was coming, but where's the fun of that? So anyway, put it all together, and we've got about half as many seats in the box as we actually need. And the Ministry is fucking _incompetent_, and didn't put anything in the wards to make this thing freely resizeable. And their pet wardcrafters are too bloody stupid to fix it. So. I'm about ready to punch Fudge or Crouch or bloody _Bagman_ in the face right now, kind of surprised Síomha or Michael hasn't beaten me to it yet."

...Well, that was rather..._much_. Bill didn't think he'd _ever_ heard that much frustration on Fionn's voice before — he was one of the nicest, most easy-going blokes Bill had ever met. (Bríd's influence, he assumed, he'd never asked.) It was just _strange_, honestly, enough he was a bit taken aback.

But, he realised after a moment, there was a relatively simple solution to that particular problem. "We could just go punch the Ministry's pet wardcrafters, and fix the damn box ourselves. How hard could it be?"

Fionn gave him a rather peculiar look. "Funnily enough, that's almost exactly what Lyra Black said."

"Smart kid. Come on, I'm pretty sure Saoirse can protect the Tánaiste from Fudge and fucking Bagman without you, at least for a few minutes."

"Yeah, alright, just let me... Síomha!"

፠

Michael was trying to be civil, but his second time meeting Cornelius Fudge wasn't shaping up to be any kind of improvement over the first.

He wasn't likely to forget that first meeting — that whole week had been bloody wild, for a whole host of reasons. It had been decades in the making, slow shifts in culture and politics, the work of thousands of people going all the way back before the Revolution, it had felt like everything coming to a head all at once. The left had been slowly reorganising for years, and when Ross had waltzed into Labour along with dozens of friends and allies pulled from the Workers' Party and Sinn Féin and the Greens (and certainly nobody in any way associated with the Provos, of course not) _just_ as Fine Gael and Fianna Fáil were viciously feuding, new rifts within the twin giants of Irish politics opening up every day...

It had seemed like Providence, almost. If Michael were given to such flights of fancy, he might almost think it had been handed to them, the moment engineered for them to exploit.

He'd hardly stopped moving for a single second, it seemed, all through October and November of '92, but even once the election had been over, Labour picking up more seats in the Dáil than they'd ever held since...well, _ever_, in point of fact — they'd even taken control of _dozens_ of county and city councils, which they'd hardly been prepared to deal with — the party had just started. Labour had immediately become the finest girl in the room — neither Fianna Fáil _nor_ Fine Gael had had the eighty votes they needed to form a government, they'd both needed to court Labour to put them over the top. Neither of them had been particularly gracious about it, but so long as Michael wasn't such a raging arsehole they'd rather decide to work with each other, he'd been in a position to demand pretty much whatever they wanted.

Though that made it sound much simpler than it had been, December had been a fucking _nightmare_. He couldn't count how many aggravating meetings he'd sat through, arguing first with this idiot from Fianna Fáil, and then this cunt from Fine Gael, back and forth and back and forth, several times a day for interminable weeks on end. There'd been a period there, for a while, when he'd almost wished they hadn't done quite so well in the general, or that Labour weren't so mad to pick _him_, of all people, to lead the Party — there were few things Michael hated more than formal meetings with "serious" politicians and Dublin advisors and lobbyists, and dealing with the bloody _press_, and _fuck_, when he told Alex to please shoot him at the end of the day most days he'd only been _sort of_ joking.

(He'd never thought he'd be _happy_ he couldn't get laid all through university, but if he'd had responsibilities to a wife and kids to balance on top of everything else, he really might have just killed himself.)

Finally, after weeks of wheeling and dealing and shouting and crying, _finally_ Fianna Fáil had lowered themselves enough to agree to a deal Michael could actually bring to his fellows in the Dáil and the Party Conference, and _not_ feel like a cheap whore doing it. He still did hate the deal they'd ended up with — Barnie had argued the Dáil simply wouldn't stand for Labour ministers in departments that were _too_ deeply involved in the economy, because you couldn't have _scary socialists_ in any positions of _actual importance_, perish the thought. He _was_ right, of course, didn't make him any less of a bastard. Barnie, unlike anyone of importance in Fine Gael — they'd been in the middle of a leadership contest, because they had a great sense of timing like that — Michael could actually sort of work with. He hadn't been _happy_ with it, but it would do for now, it was something they could settle for for now and build on later.

Of course, it was..._almost_ worth it, to get a Labour Tánaiste. Even if it _did_ have to be him. He'd argued, when it'd been coming down to the line in January, that they _could_ nominate someone else for the position. Jamie Kirk, maybe, Jamie would be a perfectly passable Tánaiste, Michael would just stay a lowly TD and keep doing his thing, that had sounded much better to him. But, well, they couldn't _not_ have the leader of the Party take the nomination..._apparently_. Not his argument. Hell, Jamie could have just taken over, Michael would have been fine with that...

But maybe it was better Michael had gone along with it. Jamie was _very_ Catholic, after all — Michael somehow doubted he would have taken the magic thing very well.

Not that he'd known that at the time, of course. It'd been...very abrupt. It had been a Friday, the third week of January '93, the storm of chaos that had been the election and the formation of a government and his confirmation as Tánaiste _finally_ over. Barnie had warned him that he'd be getting a visitor shortly, but he hadn't been very clear about what kind of visitor he'd be getting. Just said he'd be dropping by Iveagh House late in the day with a bottle, if he needed to talk about it, which had been...concerning, of course, but there'd been a _lot_ of mad shite going on at the time.

If Michael had thought all the nonsense of _getting_ here finally being over meant things would in any way get _less complicated_, he'd been _very wrong_. Being the new Minister of Foreign Affairs, he'd been in the process of being read into all kinds of things, little of which he'd been entirely pleased about. There was the insanity going on in Ulster, civil wars and coups were still rocking several former Soviet states (the list changed by the day, it was nuts), Yeltsin was a half-mad corrupt alcholic Western sockpuppet, the Americans were also still doing _something_ in Iraq (besides the _genocidal_ sanctions, he meant) and who knew what else elsewhere — the outgoing diplomatic staff had been surprised Michael _hadn't_ been surprised by the recent revelation of the Americans meddling in Latin America, but, come on, _really_ — no one really knew what the hell was going on in Pakistan or Afghanistan or Egypt or Yemen anymore, don't even get him started on Burma or Thailand, Somalia appeared to be slowly falling apart, the Congo was a fucking horror show, Bombay was _on fire_, the Israel–Palestine situation was growing more and more horrifying and hopeless by the day, apparently this whole climate change thing was shaping up to be a _castastrophic problem_, which was _incredibly irritating_, because he'd hardly even _heard_ about this until now, and _nobody in the know_ was taking it _at all seriously_...

Michael had already been a bit overwhelmed. When Fudge had waltzed into his new office to tell him about the magical world, he'd hardly had the energy to react.

Not to the magic part, anyway. The revelation that magic existed, and had always existed, that there were _millions_ of bloody _witches and wizards_ around the world, and goblins and dragons and fairies and who knew what else, that had been..._insane_, but he'd been sort of numb by that point, he'd just accepted it and moved on. (He recalled blankly wondering if he'd had a psychotic break, or maybe Alex really _had_ shot him a couple months ago, and this was his own personal Hell.) Michael might have just quietly let Fudge go on his (clearly rehearsed) little ramble until he bounced out again, and then met up with Barnie to drink himself stupid, because he did _not_ want to deal with this right now.

If Fudge weren't such an arrogant, condescending little shite. Honestly, you'd think he were speaking to a bloody child.

A bloody child who was _also_ a British subject.

See, Fudge had seemingly been operating on a very _strange_ assumption. Michael understood, now, that Britain and Ireland were one country on the magical side. Fine. That was fine. It had nothing to do with him, what did he care? But Fudge, _apparently_, had very little understanding that that _wasn't_ the case on Michael's side of the curtain.

It had taken a couple off-handed comments for Michael to realise that, when Fudge said _your_ Prime Minister, he wasn't talking about Barnie. When he said _your_ government, he was talking about Downing Street.

Michael recalled an irritated correction escalating into a shouting match. He had still ended up meeting Barnie to drink himself stupid, but there'd also been a bit of ranting about Fudge in there too — and he hadn't been alone in that either, Barnie had met the man himself, obviously. He only remembered about half the conversation, but he was pretty sure he and Barnie had spent much of it commiserating about what _arseholes_ mages were, and Michael had only even met the one at the time. Weird fucking night, was what he was saying.

That was a year and a half ago now, and while Michael knew quite a bit about this magic thing, certainly more than he had then, he was only growing _less_ comfortable with it with time. Not because _magic_, no, he was mostly okay with that part — it was actually pretty nifty, he thought, there were times around Síomha's people he had to hold in _entirely_ unprofessional childish glee. No, it was the institutions of the magical world he was starting to have serious problems with. _Apparently_, magical Britain and Ireland were still operating under some..._ridiculous_ aristocratic, oligarchy that was just... It was _somewhat_ better in Ireland, a few places in Scotland and Wales — due to, as Michael understood it, an older tribal mindset that had been preserved, more communal — but the same exploitative power dynamics that existed in the real world tormented people with _bloody magical powers_ as well. Really, he should have expected as much, but it'd still come as a revelation. An uncomfortable, infuriating one.

Of course, mages also apparently thought it was _perfectly fine_ to regularly fuck with _millions_ of peoples heads, risking severe mental and emotional trauma every time, to keep their own existence hidden, which... Michael _hated_ the Statute of Secrecy, and the particulars of its enforcement. With a vicious, violent passion.

This Fudge cunt wasn't from one of these tyrannical noble families, apparently, but he had that paternalistic, dismissive attitude toward non-magical folk Michael was _quickly_ growing to despise.

"Why, Minister, I took a portkey in, like everyone else," Michael said. He was trying to keep his voice level and polite, but he could feel the strain, the smile on his face almost painful.

The ridiculous man looked slightly surprised, for a moment — if Michael had to guess, that 'muggles' could actually _use_ portkeys, many magical devices simply didn't work for them properly. (Clíodhna hadn't been sure either, at first, it was one of the many things they'd tested since they'd formally opened relations with Saoirse months ago now.) Fudge recovered quickly, though he only recovered so far as looking _very_ flustered. Though, to be fair, he _had_ already seemed rather overwhelmed when Michael had found him, minor snafu with the Bulgarians, apparently. "Of course, of course, I just— Well, I hadn't realised you were coming, was all! Glad to meet you again, of course," he lied, obviously.

Michael's smile became even _more_ strained, but he managed to hold it, at least. "Of course I would come. As I understand it, Mullet, Troy, and Ryan are all muggleborns—" He heard the trace of sarcastic scorn on his own voice, saying the word, but he doubted anyone around knew him well enough to catch it. Well, maybe Síomha by now, and he heard Alex covering a snort, but. "—it simply wouldn't do for the Republic to not show even token support for our own citizens, would it?"

That was, he knew, a somewhat impolitic thing to say. 'Muggleborns' having split loyalties was a common narrative among certain _politely_ bigoted mages, but Michael wasn't certain it was untrue — the three 'muggleborns' in question had all recognised him instantly, after all, he doubted they would have if they hadn't any enduring sympathies for the nation of their birth. And who could blame them? The mages hadn't struck him as particularly welcoming, to put it mildly.

This time, he heard _Síomha_ trying not to laugh, but the British — Fudge, a man Michael recognised from photographs to be Crouch (their top diplomat), a handful of aides and guests — didn't seem particularly pleased with the comment. Particularly one man, with long silvery blond hair, richly dressed in a dark, shimmering English suit he could have pulled from the 1910s (complete with _cane_, because of course), his eyes narrowed with irritation, fingers tightening around the head of his (ridiculous) cane.

Nobody quite seemed to know what to say, Michael let the awkwardness linger for a moment before moving on. "Now, aren't you going to introduce me?"

Fudge flushed with clear embarrassment, but he hadn't much choice in the matter, it simply wouldn't be appropriate to do anything _else_, especially right in front of a foreign delegation. He turned to Crouch first, who greeted Michael in _Gaeilge_, because of course he did — most Irish mages still used _Gaeilge_, they didn't seem to realise the 'muggles' didn't really anymore. Michael had learned some in school like everyone else, but he'd hardly touched it since he'd left secondary. He'd been trying to pick it up again recently — seemed the thing to do, if they were truly to build closer ties with their mages — but he still wasn't nearly confident enough to actually _use_ it in a setting like this. So he just responded in English, trying to not sound irritated.

His _French_, on the other hand, was _much_ better. Fudge stumbled all over the introduction to Oblanski, babbling about how he didn't speak English, but Michael recalled that, on the magical side, the language of international diplomacy was still French, so he just took over and introduced himself. Which Oblanski apparently thought was fucking _hilarious_ — after a couple pleasant back and forths, Michael found himself wondering why the British Minister couldn't be more like this one, he seemed _far_ more personable.

And then next in the introductions was blondie — _Lucius Malfoy_, apparently. Michael hardly heard the rest of Fudge's babbling, something about him just recently making a _very_ generous donation to something (because of course), rather distracted. Because, he _did_ know that name. The Malfoys were one of the youngest of the magical noble families — in Britain, anyway, the French branch of the family had been nobility there much, _much_ longer — so Michael would have reason enough to be skeptical of him for that alone.

Though, Michael had recently been given reason to believe his own biases about things like aristocracy weren't _quite_ applicable to the magical world. So far, he'd met three noble mages, total. The first had been Fionn — Michael hadn't even realised Fionn was nobility at all until they'd been explaining the Wizengamot and the Seventeen Founders to him, and he'd asked the man, wait, isn't _your_ name Ingham? (It turned out, yes, that had been a bit of a shock, that _Fionn_ was from one of these ridiculous "Noble and Most Ancient" families.) The other two had been earlier today, Sirius and Lyra Black. Sirius had been the first _magical lord_ Michael had ever met, and...

Well, if that Hit Wizard arse hadn't been calling him _Lord Black_, Michael would have never guessed. Both of the Blacks had been... Well, _magical_, certainly — the girl especially, she could _never_ be mistaken for a normal person — but they hadn't seemed particularly _noble_ to Michael. Sirius in particular, well, he hadn't come off _that_ differently from any other excitable football fanatic. Hell, Michael had gotten the _very clear_ impression Sirius could be considered what passed for a leftist in the Wizengamot, he'd been very comfortably familiar in a lot of ways.

But _Lucius_ _Malfoy_... Michael recognised the name from the list he'd been given of known Death Eaters.

It was still a bit absurd to think about, sometimes, that their mages had just gotten out of a mad, genocidal war a decade ago. (Well, not _their_ mages, it'd barely touched Ireland, still.) The Second World War had been before Michael's time, obviously, and it was just _surreal_ to think the mages had had their own murderous racist nutjobs, had their own war, but they'd hardly even properly _resolved_ it, hadn't bothered with their own Nuremburg, instead their answer to _the Nazis_ were still just...walking around, everyone apparently determined to just not talk about the fact that some of their fellows, even people in _powerful positions in the government_, had only a decade ago been calling for the _outright murder_ of an _entire demographic of people_, had committed atrocities by the dozens, and this was just...

Michael just had no idea what to think of the magical world sometimes. There were _some_ people and organisations within it that were perfectly fine, even respectable, but the society overall...

Of course, his academic sort of horror was trumped almost right away. Malfoy, the _magic Nazi_, it was clear he was _trying_ to be polite — wouldn't do to appear a complete monster _in public_, after all — but the air of noble aloofness only seemed to intensify under Michael's attention, meeting his greeting with a cold sniff, hardly even deigning to acknowledge his existence. He did submit to the expected pleasantries, of course, but didn't bother going so far as actually shaking Michael's hand. He _did_ understand most mages didn't do that, especially the nobility, but Michael didn't give a damn, he did it anyway, just to force them out of their comfort zone. (He'd admit he was a bit of an arse himself sometimes.) But Malfoy didn't lower himself to such _muggleish_ things, of course not, just sneering at his outstretched hand with every indication of disdainful superiority.

Michael hated him, instantly. And he got the very clear sense the feeling was mutual.

Thankfully, Sirius bounded over to insert himself before he could say anything provocative. Síomha would probably be annoyed with him if he picked _another_ fight with people who could reduce him to a bloody smear on the ground with a wave of their hand. He was going to give that poor woman a heart attack one of these days.

He wasn't going to _stop_, of course. He doubted he could help himself anyway, and besides, it was just bloody funny watching the mages _squirm_.

(And it was possible he just liked teasing Síomha. Because he was an arse like that.)

፠

_This is so awkward._

_What the hell, Blaise!_

_Stop ignoring me!_

Blaise did not stop ignoring Harry, whom he had callously abandoned to shmoose with the fucking Bulgarians as they all waited for someone, somehow, to squeeze an extra thirty seats into the top box. Harry personally would have been perfectly happy just _leaving_ the box, finding a seat somewhere out there in the normal people stands — that, in fact, would probably (almost _definitely_) be less awkward than standing here trying not to get drawn into the row that Malfoy had started with Ron as soon as he had realised that all of the Weasleys (except Mrs. Weasley) were joining them in the box.

Which _might_ have been better than the Minister freaking out about him being alive (though that hadn't lasted long, dealing with the Bulgarians and the Irish was _much_ more important) or Malfoy mocking Harry for being disguised as Sirius's bastard son — Sirius, of course, had played along, spent a solid five minutes inventing a tryst with an Australian witch he happened to run into in the autumn of Nineteen Eighty, and the epic tale of their reunion in a cabaret in Berlin over the summer, before Malfoy's mum had intervened — but not _that_ much better. Especially since Ron had apparently forgotten that they'd had a fight themselves just a few hours ago, kept saying shite like _back me up, here, Harry!_ And of course if he _didn't_, or if he even hesitated, it looked like he was siding with _Malfoy_, which he _definitely wasn't_, but he also didn't want to take _Ron's_ side, he wasn't even sure what stupid thing they were arguing about — he'd tuned out right around the time Malfoy started in on Ron being so stupid and worthless that he failed out of Hogwarts (which wasn't _quite_ true, Mrs. Weasley hadn't let him actually fail the year before pulling him out) when _even Crabbe and Goyle_ hadn't failed _everything_.

Blaise, being the slimy, Slytherin _bastard_ that he was, slipped away as soon as he'd seen Malfoy headed their way — _Traitor!_

_Hey, if you don't want to deal with Draco, you can walk away, too, you know. He's plenty distracted by Weasley._

_Yeah, but I'm not a complete _arse_!_

_Yeah, you should work on that._

_Arse._

Where the hell was Gin? Or Mira? Lyra had skipped off to see what was taking so long with the whole making-the-box-bigger-on-the-inside _thing_ — she had no idea why putting it in those terms was vaguely amusing — which she insisted shouldn't really take more than a few minutes, because, honestly, were they mages or not? But _everyone_ couldn't be too busy talking to other people to realise that Harry was _literally suffocating under the awkwardness._

_That's not what _literal _means, you know..._

_Shut up, Blaise, you're dead to me._

_If lies make you happy._

"Still, Potter, I have to congratulate you—"

"Huh, what? Sorry, wasn't listening..." Ron laughed at Malfoy's annoyed sneer, but really, Harry hadn't been trying to slight the poncy bastard, he honestly hadn't noticed Malfoy was talking about him until he heard his name.

"I _said_ I have to congratulate you — your little disappearing act might be the single most important thing anyone's done for Dark politics since Dumbledore managed to get himself appointed Chief Warlock. Mother's been able to take advantage of the situation to _great_ effect."

"I think you mean to be congratulating Lyra, and maybe Xeno Lovegood. _I_ hardly did anything. And besides, it's not like your mum actually managed to get Dumbledore kicked out of the Wizengamot."

As far as he could tell from what Gin had told him and Blaise, Narcissa Malfoy was actually having a bit of trouble keeping her people in line this summer. They _had_ tried to vote Dumbledore out, but something had gone wrong, and no one (or at least Gin) knew what. Personally, Harry was glad about that, if only because Narcissa Malfoy was _definitely_ a Death Eater supporter, even if she _was_ Lyra's aunt, and he didn't think _she_ should be in charge of the government, or her allies, or whatever. (Neville's grandmother was also involved, apparently, and she sounded horrible, too.) Besides, he hadn't _meant_ to get Dumbledore fired or something — even if he wasn't nearly so willing to give the Headmaster the benefit of the doubt about his having Harry's best interests at heart as he would have in second year, he didn't _have it out for him_ or something. He'd just wanted a proper holiday for once!

Both Malfoy and Ron looked positively _shocked_ that Harry knew enough about the political situation to make even that vague a comment, which..._seriously_? He wasn't _that_ bad at this shite!

Before either of them managed to come up with a response, though, a wave of silver-blue light washed over them, tingling in that way Harry was beginning to associate with Lyra's magic.

"Ugh, _finally_."

"What the hell was _that_?"

"_Obviously_, Weasley, someone's finally doing something about the lack of proper _seating_ around here. How stupid _are_—"

There was another wave of magic, and his words cut off with a startled _eep_, as did everyone else's. The floor began to shift under their feet, keeping up with the walls which were pulling apart from each other...without really seeming to go anywhere? It was _really_ weird, but a minute later, there was about twice as much space in the box as there had been when they had arrived — the walls stopped moving, the floor stopped stretching, and the disorienting sense of magic completely ignoring physics all around him vanished.

"I think that went well," Lyra said brightly, from somewhere on the other side of the crowd, followed quickly by the bloody _Deputy Prime Minister _of _muggle Ireland_ — Harry still had _no_ idea why or how he was here, but he suspected the Blacks were involved — saying, "What the _fuck_ was _that_?" and the witch Lyra had pointed out as one of the leaders of the magical Irish nationalists saying, "_Somebody_ being a reckless showoff."

And then there were too many people talking for Harry to make out any one person, and someone was conjuring more purple, velvet-covered chairs, and everyone was getting shuffled around as they found seats for themselves. Harry somehow ended up in the middle of the Irish party, in the second row, between one of their mages, a shaggy-haired man in fucking _dueling clothes_ (because if you weren't even going to try to look muggle, you might as well be comfortable, he guessed), and Blaise. Which was a _great_ seat, because he was nowhere near Ron _or_ Malfoy. There was a youngish bloke on Blaise's other side who immediately turned to him to ask exactly how this whole _quidditch_ game worked, which, well...

Blaise wasn't exactly what one might call a _fan_ of quidditch. He knew the general rules, of course, and went to the matches at school, but only because everyone did. So it wasn't at _all_ a surprise that, after a few seconds muttering about the quaffle and scoring, he gave up. "You know, Harry actually plays, he could probably explain it better than I would. Here, switch seats with me, Harry."

Harry grinned, sliding over. Now the crowd had cleared up and he could actually see the stadium and the pitch, he was starting to get properly excited about the match, and he could _definitely_ explain Quidditch better than Blaise could. "Oh, um...okay. Alex, was it? Hello, Alex. So, there are two teams, with seven players each..."

፠

Bill watched the girl — young woman, he should probably say, that wasn't kiddie magic they'd just pulled off — warily, out of the corner of his eye. He'd made a point of finding a seat next to her in the chaos that followed their expansion of the box, but now that everyone was settled he had no idea how to initiate the conversation he _really_ thought they needed to have. The one that started with _who the fuck are you_ and eventually worked its way around to _what are you doing with Gin_, because, as cool as that little impromptu cooperative project had been (he might've been a bit harsh, calling the Ministry wardcrafters idiots for not knowing how to deal with the situation, but it honestly hadn't occurred to him that there wouldn't already be _some_ kind of space-defining enchantment in place to alter, even if it wasn't _intended_ to re-size the box), he wasn't certain he was entirely comfortable with his baby sister falling into the company of a budding dark sorceress — especially not after that whole _possession_ episode not two years ago.

Bill didn't know _exactly_ what the consequences of that possession had been, mostly because she'd managed to hold herself together in the immediate aftermath well enough that his parents hadn't seen fit to force her to talk to an actual mind-healer when she said she just didn't want anyone else in her head ever again. He had done everything he could for her, teaching her the basics of occlumency and giving her a primer — which, yeah, kids weren't supposed to read shite like that, but really who gave a fuck, she was his _sister_, and she'd needed it — and she was less obviously shakey than last summer, but he was pretty sure that, whatever had happened there, she was still bound to be more vulnerable to the influence of someone like Black.

He wasn't the only one who thought so, of course, but Mum wasn't exactly in a position to suss out what Miss Black's intentions might be. She wasn't even in a position to talk to _Gin_ about her friendship with the recently discovered Black heiress — they'd had a screaming row about her (and the people Gin was hanging out with and the magic she'd been practicing and how she'd been acting in general) on the very first night Bill had been home.

According to the twins, it was merely one in a long series of rows, most of which came down to Mum wanting Gin to be more like Aunt Alice (kind and fair, she'd joined the Aurors because she believed in justice and protecting the weak) and less like Grandmother Lucretia (who Bill remembered as being proud and serious and uncompromising, altogether intimidating). Though the specifics of the matter — Gin falling in with the daughter (bio-alchemic twin) of a psychotic war criminal and the bastard son of a "common-born, social climbing slut" like Mirabella Zabini — didn't help, either. Mum and Dad had been in the same year as Zabini and the Blackheart in school, so Mum had a better idea than most of what Bellatrix might have been capable of at fourteen, and Zabini was, in some ways, worse — she was _sane_.

Mum being Mum, her concern had manifested mostly as nagging and obvious disapproval, and Gin, being Gin (and more like Mum than she wanted to believe), had told her to fuck off — it wasn't as though she'd been failing her classes, so why should Mum care? Mum wasn't stupid, she'd caught the implication that Gin was blaming her for not really noticing or apparently caring about the possession incident, and who was Gin to judge her for her parenting (aside from, you know, _her kid_). The long and short of it was, Mum and Gin hadn't exchanged more than two civil words in the past six weeks before falling into an argument.

Bill couldn't help but be on Gin's side in this.

He understood where Mum was coming from, of course. Unlike Charlie and Percy, he actually _remembered_ the War, not just a few muddled, terrified impressions of it. He'd just started school when it had ended, so he was old enough to have known the people she'd lost — Uncle Fabian and Uncle Gideon and Aunt Alice — and the muggleborns Mum and Dad had hidden in the attic with the ghoul before sneaking them out of the country, and the way Dad had been _so_ stressed, all the time, trying to get by in the Ministry and pass information to the Order of the Phoenix without catching the wrong sort of attention. They'd mostly stayed away from the rest of the Order, so no one would suspect they were involved in it, but Bill also remembered Grandfather Septimus telling Dad that if he didn't stop associating with them entirely, keep his head down properly, he would be forced to distance himself from his youngest son, and Grandmother Lucretia funnelling money and resources to them through Mum, because de Mort's Death Eaters were _an affront to the Dark_, but she couldn't bring herself to openly support Dumbledore.

(He even remembered Sirius Black coming around a few times with Aunt Alice. He'd been _crushed_ when he first heard that Sirius had been a traitor the whole time, because he'd _liked_ him — he'd been the only adult around who wasn't _obviously worried_, always joking and laughing, walking around in broad daylight wearing muggle tee-shirts like _you wanna make something of it?_ and calling him _Bill_ instead of _Billy_.)

But Mum had always thought she knew best for her children, and never been very tactful about expressing her opinions on the matter. It wasn't really a secret that she could be incredibly overbearing and controlling. Even _Bill_ had had several screaming rows with her over the course of his fifth and sixth years at school — and again when he'd decided to start working for the goblins overseas, because he had been twenty-one years old and deserved to have his own life, damn it, not just live with his parents and help out with the kids and stop their house falling down around their ears — and he hadn't been seriously traumatised and trying to cope with it on his own, like Gin was. He could count the people he'd ever had an actual _row _with on one hand and still have fingers left over, it was just... Mum had this way of getting under _everyone's _skin.

She _did_ have good reasons to be worried about Gin, though. She had gotten more letters about her only daughter over the course of the last Hogwarts term than the twins and Ron combined (which had to be saying a lot, because Ron had been failing so many classes she'd actually _pulled him out of school_). She'd been getting into fights with her roommates — put two of them in hospital, even — the situation culminating with Gin moving into the room Black and her girlfriend had "tricked the castle into creating" for them. Since she'd come home for the summer, she'd been sneaking off to the home of some boy called _Justin_ (whose name Mum always said with paranoid scorn), and writing letters to the Nott heir in some kind of cypher, so Mum couldn't read them, which...wasn't entirely unreasonable, really. Gin got up early every morning to run to town and back, now — literally _run_, as in, for exercise — and Mum had used this opportunity to search her room early in the holiday. She'd found books on healing and bioalchemy, along with a sheaf of notes on various curses and counter-curses — none of them particularly _dark_, but many potentially lethal. (And of course she'd confronted Gin about them, making it _very_ clear that she had no respect for her daughter's privacy whatsoever.) Even more concerning, Gin's magic was far more focused now than it had been just last summer. Part of that would be from the occlumency, of course, but part of it could only come from obsessive practice casting over a period of _months_. Taken together, it painted a disturbing picture, especially in a witch who'd just turned thirteen.

Even more so in a witch who'd been _possessed_ for the better part of ten months the year before.

So, because Mum did have good reason to be concerned, and there was no way in hell Gin was going to tell _her_ anything, Bill had spent quite a lot of time with his baby sister over the past couple of weeks — more than anyone else in the family, certainly. She wasn't speaking to Ron because he'd told Mum about her hanging out with Slytherins at school, and the twins were completely wrapped up in this joke shop thing of theirs, and Percy with his new job at the Ministry. Dad, of course, was still as obsessed with his muggle artefacts as ever, tinkering out in his shed when he wasn't at work, and Charlie was even more of a stranger to the kids than Bill was — at least he'd come back home for a couple of years after Hogwarts. Plus with Mum obviously nagging him about his hair and the magesight amulet Chione had given him — also known as the earring with the "horrible great _fang_ on it, _honestly_, Bill!" — the minute he'd apparated in, Bill was obviously the most likely of her brothers to be sympathetic to her feud with their mother. He'd invited her to go for a walk after breaking up her fight with Mum that first night — telling them he'd been sleeping with the team's kite wilderfolk guide for the better part of a year, you know, if anyone had been wondering what was new in his life, had rendered both of them pretty effectively speechless — and it hadn't been difficult to convince her to tell him what had been going on with her over the past year.

He was fairly certain by now that this wasn't some lingering effect of the possession. Or rather, it was probably a consequence of trying to cope with the whole experience, and maybe not a very healthy one, but she wasn't still being influenced by the impression of the teenage dark lord, which was what he'd told Mum.

But most of it _did_ come back to Black, really. (Zabini was, as Gin put it "a total creep.") Apparently the other girl — who reminded Gin of 'Tom' in a lot of ways, which Bill thought should be a huge red flag right there — had told her that she was completely worthless, creeping around like a fucking victim — little Gin _swore_, now, it was bloody disconcerting — then introduced her to Nott and made some kind of deal to get him to teach her to fight — which sounded like pretty blatant manipulation to Bill, but he couldn't imagine what Black thought she was going to get out of it. And Gin had obviously thrown herself into learning to defend herself with everything she had which was...good? maybe? Fuck if he knew, he wasn't a bloody mind healer.

(He was seriously considering whether he could arrange for O'Rourke to meet Gin, because she _was_ a bloody mind healer. If anyone he knew was familiar with the process of recovery after major possession, it would be her.)

He was, though, pretty fucking certain that this was the best opportunity he was going to get to figure out exactly what this girl who apparently held so much influence over his sister — pushing her into learning to fight, introducing her to 'questionable' people, and now even sharing a room with her at school — wanted from her.

Oh, who was he kidding? Even if she wasn't a potential bad influence on his baby sister, Bill would still probably be curious enough about the new Black to try to get a chance to talk to her. Especially now that he knew she'd been trained as a fucking cursebreaker.

He had known that she'd warded _Justin_ Finch-Fletchley's (muggle) parents' pool house as a dueling studio. He had _had_ to go check it out when Gin told him exactly what she'd been doing at the older boy's house, if only to assure himself that they weren't going to implode if hit with the wrong spell, or shatter and inform the entire bloody Ministry that Justin and Gin had been using magic on an illegally warded muggle property, completely unsupervised. As it turned out, he needn't have worried. They were perfectly fine — tournament standard, behind a take on the Holston variation on the Hogwarts dueling platform, stripping intent and bleeding excess energy into a nearby ley line to avoid triggering the Ministry's blanket observation wards, behind a suite of attention-diverting wards executed more neatly than Bill could have done at that age.

He had been slightly surprised at the skill that had gone into designing the scheme, though less so after Mum had told him that Lyra Black was a clone of the Blackheart. It wasn't really a secret outside of Britain that Bellatrix Black was as brilliant as she was mad. She had published a series of articles on advanced theoretical arithmancy in her late teens, before moving on to bloody _time travel_. (When she wasn't busy being a psychotic mass murderer — de Mort and Black had a very..._complicated_ reputation, in the international academic community. Even most Miskatonites considered waging a fucking war to be a bit beyond the pale, especially one centered on something as stupid as _blood purity_.) It stood to reason that her bio-alchemic twin/daughter would be just as sharp.

But wardcrafting was something one could learn on one's own. There were published ward schemes out there, from simple shite like the Holston ward (and _dozens_ of variations), to complex dueling wards, to security wards that were completely outdated — no one would publish a security ward that hadn't long since been cracked — but still served as good examples for anyone trying to learn the art independently. And it wasn't insanely dangerous to learn wardcrafting through trial and error, without any real guidance. Bill had. A solid ninety per cent of the enchantments holding his parents' house upright were experimental shite that no wardcrafter in his right mind would actually use in a professional situation, or cheap, quick and dirty solutions he'd come up with while he was still in school — good enough to get the job done, but _terribly_ inelegant, poorly optimised, and too heavily integrated into everything he'd cast on top of them to fix now.

Cursebreaking wasn't _nearly_ so well documented. Bill was pretty sure, for instance, that nowhere in any text on wardcrafting was there an explanation of splitting a ward scheme using a fucking bulla so you could insert a significant element into the middle of the thing without completely destabilising it, as they'd just done a minute ago. That was the sort of thing someone _had_ to have taught her, if only because the chances of figuring out how to do it on her own without killing herself were _miniscule_. And since (apparently) no one knew where the new Black had actually come from, that was a hell of a lot more interesting than _quidditch_.

Bill _liked_ quidditch, of course, but not nearly as much as the rest of the family. This was the happiest he'd seen Gin since he'd come home, despite having managed to get stuck in the front row between Sirius Black and Draco Malfoy, with Narcissa on her son's other side. The adults were sniping at each other over the kids' heads about...Bill couldn't quite make out what.

While he was trying to, Black solved the problem of how to start a conversation for him, apparently having given up on making small talk with the Bulgarian on her other side. "This is neat." She flicked his earring, sending the fang swinging. "I've never seen that sealing charm used in an amulet before. Where'd you get it?"

"A friend made it for me — new design, asked me to be her testing kneazle." So far he liked it. It was more comprehensive than the magesight spell he normally used and, after he'd gotten used to the weight of it, he'd quickly grown accustomed to the sensory enhancement. To the point that he _really _didn't like taking it off, actually. Chi said that was probably a side-effect of the spells she'd included to make it easier to interpret the perception charm, but Bill was pretty sure it was just because... Well, it was kind of like seeing in colour for the first time, wasn't it? Chi just didn't understand that because she could see magic without a damn charm.

"Neat," the girl repeated. "Hey, speaking of experimental enchantments, is that shadow-walking ward on your parents' house based on a goblin design? Because I was under the impression that you couldn't use elemental sunlight in a runic ward, and you _definitely_ can't use a ritual to cast a fucking bounce line. And where the hell did you anchor it? Because I did _not_ see it coming."

"Er..." It was, actually, but admitting that he'd been trying to reverse-engineer the wards _on the bank vaults_, or at least some of their elements, was the kind of thing that would _definitely_ get him fired. "Why do you want to know?"

"You mean _other_ than it being bloody neat? You _did_ kind of send me to the bottom of the fucking Channel. Isn't the point of a bounce ward supposed to be that they're _not_ lethal?" She didn't quite manage to say that with a straight face, probably because wards that simply repelled an intruder, redirecting their apparition or portkey or whatever, were _supposedly_ among the safest home-protection enchantments, but they were also _incredibly_ easy to alter to teleport a potential intruder to any number of dangerous locations.

"Well, obviously it _wasn't_. Wasn't even meant to be. Vampires don't need to breathe." It was _far_ more likely that a vampire would try to shadow-walk into his parents' house than a human, and even _that_ wasn't what anyone might call _likely_. He'd mostly done it to see if he could. "And it's anchored in a pocket dimension. Why the hell were you trying to shadow-walk into my parents' house in the first place?" Why the hell did she know how to shadow-walk was a better question, really, but he couldn't really bring himself to be surprised that the Blackheart's daughter was experimenting with magic humans really weren't supposed to be able to do.

"I was trying to visit Gin, obviously. Pocket... You mean the Manchurian Flytrap? How the..."

She trailed off, clearly wondering how he'd managed to anchor _anything_ in an inescapable death-trap. Which, the answer was obvious, at least thinking about it for a bit — he'd just built the shadow-walking ward into the Flytrap before he'd fully implemented it. It had been kind of tricky to get it to fold together properly, but he'd worked it out eventually. However... "Manchurian Flytrap? Of course not, that would be _incredibly_ illegal. Do you mean the everted Polonian Cross-Dimensional Inversion?"

Black blinked at him. "Calling it by the proper academic name doesn't change the fact that an everted Spinning Door _is_ a Manchurian Flytrap. Actually, I think the original Spinning Door is just a _broken _Flytrap."

It was, yes. Or rather, it had been developed out of an attempt to find a way to escape from a Flytrap — one which had been largely unsuccessful. "Yes, but a Flytrap would kill the invader and use the energy of their death to help power the ward scheme." The active, automated subsumption element was, in Bill's opinion (and that of the law) _kind of important_.

"Oh, _right_, because just leaving an invader to rot in a pocket dimension is so much better than actually using them for something. _I forgot_."

Bill snorted, trying not to laugh, mostly because that _I forgot_ reminded him of a conversation with a former colleague. "Okay, was it Kazlova?"

"Was who what, now?"

"Whoever trained you. Because that sounded an _awful_ lot like something Nadya Kazlova would say."

She smirked at him. "Nope."

"Green?" She shook her head. "Brinkley?"

Her grin only grew wider. "Nuh-uh."

"Would you tell me if I guessed it?" Bill asked, suddenly reminded of talking to his youngest siblings when they were about _six_.

"Sure, but you never will."

Oh, really? Bill would take that challenge. Cursebreaking wasn't that big a world, really, even among independent contractors. There were a few loners out there, but most of them, at least the ones good enough to be considered at least semi-legitimate (and presumably the Black heiress's Master would have been at least _semi_-legit), tended to get around, mixing with different crews, sometimes recruited for a project, sometimes just drinking with like-minded madmen between jobs. Bill suspected he'd met them, whoever they were, and that he wasn't likely to guess had to mean it was someone incredibly unlikely for one reason or another.

He considered for a moment as Bagman cast a Voice Amplifying Charm on himself, welcoming them all to "the final of the four-hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!"

The crowd, of course, went wild, clapping and waving flags. The residents of the top box joined in, though most not quite so exuberantly as the Blacks or the twins, all of whom jumped to their feet to scream and cheer, blatantly ignoring the variously shocked and appalled looks sent their way from...pretty much everyone else. Including Bill — he _really_ hadn't been expecting that.

"Ah..." Bagman hesitated, obviously slightly thrown by the inappropriately over-the-top display of excitement only feet away from him. "Right... So, then, without further ado, allow me to introduce...the Bulgarian National Team Mascots!"

"Bisset?" Bill guessed, as Black dropped back into her chair, grinning like a lunatic. Bisset was a staunch neo-_Gemeenschoppist_ and absolutely hated the very concept of nobility, he'd never be caught dead working for the Blacks.

"Getting colder."

Hmm...Green had been trained by Davison, and he was the one who'd showed Bill that trick with the bulla, said he'd learnt it from his mentor, so... "Davison?" He had thought the older wizard was retired, but he supposed that _did_ make him unlikely.

"Warmer. Oh, hey, look, the Bulgarians brought veela cheerleaders!"

Yes, Bill had noticed. A hundred bloody veela working in concert were kind of difficult to _miss_. Their allure was blunted this far away from them, and it only took a few seconds for Fionn to cast a paling against it, but some of the more weak-minded residents of the box were obviously still affected anyway. Fudge had gotten out of his seat, leaning over the edge to get a better look, and Draco Malfoy was practically drooling.

There was an uproar as the veela were sent off the field — it wouldn't do, after all, for half the men in the stands to start getting in fist fights and jumping to their deaths. Honestly, he was kind of surprised that the IAQ had approved that particular choice of 'mascot'. Even more surprised they'd managed to find a hundred veela who were willing to come to Britain, even for this, but... "Brinkley?" She and Davison had both been students of Ciardha Monroe, once upon a time. The last two still alive, so far as Bill knew.

Black sniggered. "Nope. Can you really see Pretty Kitty voluntarily spending more than ten minutes in my presence?"

Well, no, he couldn't, really. Kate Brinkley was one of the oldest, most successful monster slayers and travelling cursebreakers out there — that she'd survived this long was a testament to how careful she was, and how seriously she took the job. Black, on the other hand, was obviously anything but. If Brinkley ever found out she was going around calling her _Pretty Kitty_... That _alone_ spoke to a dangerous disregard for her own safety.

("Now kindly put your wands in the air...for the _Irish_ National Team Mascots!")

But the nickname suggested that they had, in fact, met. So, who did Brinkley associate with? She was almost ninety years old, so she'd probably met anyone with any reputation to speak of. The most notorious semi-legendary cursebreaker out there who was (probably) still alive was... "Night?"

("Are those _leprechauns_?" one of the muggles said as about three-hundred of them soared over the stands in a shamrock formation, dropping their false gold on the unsuspecting fans, many of whom seemed not to realise that it _was_ false.)

"Who?"

"The Shadow's partner. Robbed Gringotts back in the Sixties? Possibly Adil Shafiq, but no one ever proved it." He was pretty sure that people would have noticed if Shafiq had had an apprentice in the past decade or so, so if it really was Night who'd trained her, he probably wasn't Shafiq, but.

"Ah, no. I told you, you're not going to get it."

He glared at her smug smirk, taking another moment to think about it as Bagman introduced the Teams. (The Tánaiste had apparently decided to get in on the fun, leaping to his feet and cheering obnoxiously as the Irish players flew onto the pitch. Síomha Ní Ailbhe, sitting nearby, let her head fall into one hand, shoulders shaking with laughter.) Maybe he was going about this the wrong way. Where could she possibly have been _without_ him running into her sometime in the past five years, or, for that matter, anyone _else _who might have mentioned, oh, hey, did you know so-and-so took on a ten-year-old Bellatrix Black as an apprentice?

"One of the Black metamorphs?" There were still a few around, he knew. He thought he might have actually met Nymphadora once, passing through Carthage.

"That really should have been your _first_ guess. I mean, it's practically the—" The rest of her response was cut off by the starting whistle and obligatory jumping and screaming. He was willing to bet it was something like _that's the logical conclusion, Weasley_.

But it really wasn't. Or at least, it seemed pretty absurd to Bill. He meant, that she'd been trained by some long-missing semi-legendary Black metamorph seemed about as likely to him as... _No_.

_That_ actually sounded insane, even in his own head.

But he _had_ taught both of the cursebreakers whose styles Black's had reminded him of, and Brinkley _definitely_ would have known him, and it was _impossibly_ unlikely. Literally impossible. But the goblins _had_ been saying that the girl was a 'wandering star' — a time-traveller, basically, from a timeline mostly parallel to their own. Bill had thought they were just fucking with the humans, but if they weren't...

"Ciardha Monroe."

Black, who had been distracted by the start of the match ("_And it's Mullet! Troy! Moran! Dimitrov!"_), whipped back around to face him, eyes wide with surprise. "_You weren't supposed to guess that_," she said, switching to Gobbledygook, presumably so everyone around them wouldn't overhear her confirm that she was from another bloody dimension. One in which Ciardha Monroe was still alive, apparently.

...Well, this was _definitely_ more interesting than quidditch.

፠

This was _amazing_, quidditch as Draco had never seen it played before. From the moment Mostafa blew the starting whistle, it had been non-stop action, the Irish chasers keeping the quaffle in the air more than it was in their hands, falling into and breaking formation so fast that idiot Bagman couldn't even keep up with the commentary, spinning and swooping around bludgers and the other players with such agility it was hard to remember they were actually _playing quidditch_, trying to accomplish anything other than just the most _gorgeous _flying Draco had ever seen.

Krum, of course, was _brilliant_, he kept flying interference for his chasers, between circuits of the pitch, but Draco wouldn't be surprised if someone had told him the Irish chasers were using some kind of telepathy spell, they were _that_ coordinated, and some of those acrobatics! Troy scored the first goal of the match with a Catapult, flipping his broom tail over nose to build momentum and flinging the quaffle two-handed through the right hoop as Moran and Mullet ran interference, luring one of the bludgers away and blocking Ivanova respectively — the Bulgarian chaser was forced to dodge to avoid a collision (bloody ballsy, for a chaser to just drop in and _sit _there, bracing for impact, especially a chaser as slight as Mullet, if Ivanova _had_ hit her, she'd've gotten the worst of it), so suddenly that she nearly hit Levski — Connolly stole the other bludger from Volkov and passed it off to Quigley, who used it to force Zograff down, too far from the hoops to defend them properly, as Connolly arranged an _actual_ collision between himself, Volkov, Vulchanov, _and_ Dimitrov, who got crushed between Connolly and the larger of the two Bulgarian beaters, the other one spiralling toward the ground. He recovered quickly, but not quickly enough — by the time he reached the bludger that Moran was leading on a merry chase, slowly enough that it wouldn't lose her, keeping far enough away from the other players that it wouldn't get distracted, and beat it at Troy, the Irish chaser had already scored, rolling his Catapult straight into a flip turn, zipping away, the bludger passing him by _inches_ as he spun back upright.

All of this happened in about three seconds, mind. He'd replay it on his omnioculars later, see if there was even a _name_ for that play, but at the moment, Draco couldn't stand the idea of looking away, even for an instant.

Through it all, Lynch, the Irish captain and seeker, circled the pitch, carrying out his snitch search pattern with a single-mindedness that could _only_ come from knowing that his team knew _exactly _what they were doing. There was no need for him to call their plays, no need for him to look out for bludgers, no need to get distracted by _anything_, just trusting that they'd do what they needed to do. Even after getting plowed with that Wronski Feint early on in the match, he kept his mind on finding the tiny golden ball whose capture would assure his team's victory (not that they couldn't win without it, but keeping a fifteen-goal lead was a tricky proposition, even for a chaser squad as good as Ireland's).

Draco attempted to keep his attention on the match with the same single-mindedness, despite the conversation Mother and Lord Black were having over his head, and the way the Weasley girl leapt out of her seat when Ireland scored. The conversation was really the more distracting part of it. Truth be told, he'd felt like jumping to his feet and cheering, too, but unlike the redheaded degenerates — or Black, or Potter (though Potter actually might not know better, he _had_ been raised by muggles) — _he _simply _couldn't _allow himself to act so undignified in public. The _looks_ his parents would give him...

Though he had to say, Mother wasn't exactly the picture of decorum today herself.

He was pretty sure that Lord Black was intentionally antagonising her, they'd been going back and forth since they'd sat down. "I'm just _saying_, Lynch's got a decent chance. Yeah, Krum's the better seeker by a long mile, but those Firebolts..."

Draco didn't have to look to know Mother was sneering at him, it was clear enough in her tone, and he couldn't look away, anyway — the beaters had surrounded the scrum, all four of them sending the bludgers through a pack so tight Draco couldn't even tell which team had the quaffle like they were doing bloody _drills_. "Yes, well, _I'm _just saying the dementors certainly haven't done your intelligence any favours. The Firebolt may be _faster _than anything Zirihnkov has come out with, but the advantages in maneuverability _far_ outweigh those of speed—"

"I suppose I'll have to take your word for it, doubt I've spent _nearly_ as much time riding a broom as you have," Lord Black said, his tone insinuating...Draco wasn't really sure what. Of _course_ Mother had spent more time flying than he did — he'd been in _Azkaban_ for the past twelve years. Mother didn't have _much_ free time, but flying was one of her favorite things. When she _did_ have a free afternoon, she was almost always out in the air.

"I said _speed_, Sirius, not _size_," Mother said drily.

"I never took you for a witch who prefers to take things _slowly_," Lord Black drawled.

Father cleared his throat on Mother's other side. Draco looked away from the match for half a second, just long enough to see that Mother had actually gone slightly _pink_. Her voice was tight and higher than usual as she said, "I daresay you've ridden _more_ brooms than I have, even if you haven't taken the time to perfect your skill."

"_My_ skill with a broom seems rather irrelevant to this conversation, but if you'd like a demonstration sometime..."

"Do you _mind_?" Weasley interrupted, undoubtedly _rudely_ — both Mother and Lord Black were of a status _well_ above her own, and _adults_ on top, but he couldn't help being a bit grateful to her for it. At least until she added, "I can hardly hear the commentary over your flirting," which was just..._scandalous_, suggesting that his _mother_ would _flirt_ in _public_ — and with _Lord Black_, of all people!

Black let out a bark of laughter. "Who's flirting, love? We were just talking about flying."

"Uh _huh_."

That sarcastic, disbelieving scoff was enough that Draco couldn't help chiming in. "What on Earth are you talking about, Weasley?"

"Oh, come on! Really? Don't you know why flying is traditionally a _witches'_ sport? And what they say about female quidditch players?"

Well, he was pretty sure that before modern cushioning charms were developed, flying a broom was just bloody uncomfortable for a wizard, but wha—

"Miss _Weasley_!" Lord Black exclaimed, grinning behind his tone of false shock. "Surely you aren't insinuating that Lady Malfoy is a sex-sta—"

"_Do_ shut up, Black," Father interrupted, directing a spell at Lord Black behind Mother's back and over his and Weasley's heads.

Lord Black made a rude hand gesture at him. "Nice try, Malfoy, but Bella used that on _everyone_. Pretty sure we could all break it by, what? Age _six_?"

"Yes," Mother said. "If she _actually _wanted you to shut up, she'd use _this_ one." She flicked another spell at him, this one _much_ stronger, Draco could feel the cold darkness of the magic as it passed him by, ruffling his hair. Lord Black jumped as though stung, his mouth open in a silent yelp, but whatever it was, he apparently couldn't break it so easily as the first one, because he just crossed his arms and glowered at her, tapping a toe in unmistakeable annoyance.

Mother just smirked at him. Then rolled her eyes as he cast an illusion above their heads — _Bella, Cissy's being mean to me_.

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Siri! I'm busy! Aren't you two supposed to be _adults_?" Black shouted back at him, over a roar from the Bulgarian side, as they very nearly scored their first goal of the match — Ryan _just_ managed to save it, threw the quaffle straight _down_, half the chasers falling into death-dives racing to follow it, and the rest spreading out, ready to support whoever managed to catch up to it first. (Mullet, by a hair — she was tiny, didn't have the upper body strength to play a straightforward style, but _incredibly_ fast, put some _seekers_ he'd seen play to shame.) She did un-curse him, though.

Draco tried very hard not to think about the fact that Black was actually a version of his crazy Aunt Bella, and therefore inherently slightly terrifying, even if he _hadn't_ arranged for her to be kidnapped and tortured at the end of last year. (Which he _had_, and she knew it. She'd practically admitted as much a couple of weeks ago, he was absolutely _dreading_ going back to school, where she'd be able to enact whatever terrible revenge she had planned for him without Mother's interference.) He didn't do a very good job of it, obviously. He needed something to distract himself, he decided. Quidditch was all well and good, but it was hard to enjoy while preoccupied by thoughts of Black's impending revenge, and not nearly as good a distraction from fear as, say, anger.

"_Muffliato_," Draco muttered under his breath, using an anti-eavesdropping spell Snape taught all the Slytherins so that he wouldn't annoy Mother before saying (in the most accusing, disapproving tone he could manage), "You _weren't_ insinuating—"

"Don't be _stupid,_ Malfoy, and you can shut up, too, by the way. In case you hadn't noticed, we're at the bloody _World Cup_, and—" She broke off to jump up again, cheering and clapping for a goal Draco hadn't seen, distracted as he was by defending his mother's honour (and pretending not to be terrified by the reminder that his cousin was insane and had it out for him).

When she sat down, he decided to try again. "Do you _mind_? Leaping about like a bloody savage is just—"

"Seriously, Malfoy? I'm not stopping _you_ sitting there with a stick so far up your arse you'd rather bitch at _me_ than shut your thrice-cursed mouth and—"

"At least I don't look like a bloody idiot, jumping up every thirty seconds to scream myself—"

Ireland scored again, prompting more of the very jumping and screaming he'd been complaining about. _Ignore_ me_, will she_...

"Typical Weasley. I'd _expect_ this sort of behavior from someone so stupid he failed out of Hogwarts — not sure anyone noticed, but even Crabbe and Goyle haven't failed _everything_." No reaction. "Even _you_ didn't fail _everything_, even having a mental breakdown all of second year and attacking all those poor mudbloods."

_That_ got her attention. Her head snapped around, hair whipping out behind her and falling over her shoulder in a way that _should_ have made her look softer — her chin was too strong and her mouth too wide to call her features delicate and she had the sharp Black cheekbones, not what Draco would call _pretty_ — but the way she was _staring_ at him, wide brown eyes flat and hard, her expression completely impassive, the world between them seemed to narrow, the light scattering of freckles across her tiny nose and the annoying squeaking rosette sort of falling away, taking any impression that he was trying to get a rise out of a soft little girl with them. "You mean when I was possessed by the Dark Lord? Allowing my marks to drop would have raised suspicion, he couldn't have _that_."

"When you were _what_?!" He cleared his throat, trying not to draw attention to the way his voice had broken on that last word. "You're as mad as Black!" Because all _Draco_ knew — all _anyone_ knew, so far as he knew — was that little Ginny Weasley had been having some kind of _episodes_, painting messages on the walls and using some kind of Dark Arts to petrify Mrs. Norris and all those muggleborns, until she'd finally lost it completely, tried to commit suicide in one of the lower dungeons. For attention, they presumed. Of course, there were _rumors _about an actual basilisk and the Chamber of Secrets, and Potter supposedly killing the thing with Gryffindor's bloody sword, but he was pretty sure those were just rumors. Yes, Potter was obviously involved, he'd showed up to that surprise feast covered in muck and blood, like he'd just pulled her out of an oubliette or something, maybe after she'd cut her own wrists, but no one actually believed he'd killed a thousand-year-old _basilisk_ with a _sword_.

"Oh, so you weren't in on it, then? I did wonder, you know."

"In on _what_, you delusional—"

"Your father slipped a horcrux into one of my school books before my first year, when he got into that fight with _my_ father, at Flourish and Blotts." She glared over his shoulder as she made her accusation, looking at Father only two seats away.

A _horcrux_?! Draco knew what a horcrux _was_, of course. Mother had told him the _real_ story of the Warlock's Hairy Heart when he was nine or ten (bloody horrifying, he hadn't slept for a week), even if he didn't know how to _make_ one. Mother had told him, all matter-of-fact about it, that it wasn't particularly _difficult_, so far as ritual magic went, just bloody. And painful. And _deep_ Dark Arts, the most evil sort of soul magic. There was, she said, no shame in not wanting to ever have anything to do with that kind of magic, he could still be a proper dark wizard without being _evil_. _Most _dark wizards, even, didn't ever get into _that_ sort of madness.

He couldn't decide if he was surprised that the Dark Lord had, or not.

On the one hand, yes, he knew that the Dark Lord had claimed to be immortal. He'd been dead — well, _gone_ — for almost thirteen years, now, but people still talked about him like he'd be coming back one day. And he knew that the Dark Lord had done a lot of terrible things. Enslaving Draco's father, and who knew how many other people, came to mind. He knew that Aunt Bellatrix was insane — he'd found a file in Mother's office, once, copies of crime scene reports, raids Aunt Bella had been responsible for. (He had no idea _why_ Mother had them, and he hadn't wanted to admit he'd been snooping to ask.) Those were even worse than the Warlock's Hairy Heart — he'd only seen a couple of photos, but he'd actually thought he was going to be sick. He wouldn't be surprised at _all_ to find out that _she'd_ made a horcrux, just _because_ it was bloody and painful and the sort of Dark Arts only crazy people did. But the Dark Lord...

The Dark Lord was a bit of an odd topic. Draco could probably count on one hand the number of times he'd actually talked to either of his parents about the War, but he had the impression that, even if she thought he was mad and dangerous and evil, Mother also kind of thought he'd...had the right idea, sort of? His methods, of course, were abhorrent, but a Dark Revolution _was _a cause that she would actually support, with the right leader. Father, the only time Draco had ever gotten him to say anything on the subject, had told him that the Dark Lord _had been_ a great man, once. But he'd been cursed, or something, some ritual magic gone wrong, maybe, and he'd lost his mind. Started forcing people to do his bidding, like Father, and Lord Nott...and the Yaxleys...Mr. Crabbe and Mr. Goyle... (The list went on.) Even some of the _actual _Death Eaters, Father said, were decent people — they'd joined up before he went mad and would have left if they could. (They _couldn't_, of course, being Marked, and all.)

A roar from the Bulgarian side distracted him from that train of thought as they brought the score up to sixty-ten. (The Bulgarian Minister's delegation, who had also been watching the Blacks and Weasleys and several of the Irish muggles as though they'd lost their bloody minds jumping and clapping like children when their team scored — what were they even _doing_ here? — restricted themselves to polite but enthusiastic applause.)

Then again, it was also possible that Weasley was lying, or still hadn't got her head on straight. She'd practically _have_ to be mad, if she thought Father had had anything to do with passing her this so-called horcrux. Even if the Dark Lord had made one, and Father for _some_ reason had access to it, he would hardly have wanted it out there in the _world_, trying to re-embody itself!

"I'm sure he did no such thing, you lying little..._hag_!"

Weasley rolled her eyes. "And I'm sure you're an idiot. Tom thought so, too, you know. He wasn't terribly impressed with your father, either, both of you were just _so_ disappointing compared to Candidus... They went to school together, you know."

Draco felt his eyes narrow. _Now_ she was just making shite up. Everyone knew the Dark Lord had been from _Brittany_, and Great-Grandfather Candidus had gone to Hogwarts! "You're having me on!"

She just raised an eyebrow at him, cool as you please, and snapped back with a response that could have come straight out of Tracey Davis's mouth. "Am I? Thanks ever so for informing me. Whatever would I do without you here to correct my own memories? Must be some other pasty blond I remember him shagging."

Draco broke his privacy charm. "MOTHER!"

Mother turned to look at him, raised an eyebrow in one of those _remember, Draco, you're in public_ expressions. "Yes, my son?"

"Was the Dark Lord's name really _Tom_? And did he know Great-Grandfather Candidus?"

Mother's eyes flicked from Draco to the Weasley girl and back, a hint of suspicion clouding her features, but before she could answer, Lord Black snorted. "Pretty sure he _knew_ old Candy in every sense of the word."

"How the hell would you know that, Black?" Father drawled, a dangerous note of annoyance in his tone, now they were talking about his grandfather.

Lord Black grinned. "Got it from Bella, obviously. See, your lovely wife got all jealous that I was fooling around with Giovanni — you remember him, right, Cissy? — so she couldn't have him, asked Bella to have a talk with me about sleeping around. If I recall correctly, that pretty much boiled down to _if you knock up a muggle, I will castrate you_. Er... Not really sure, it was a while ago, but I _think_ I was trying to give her shite about her own sex life—"

"Giovanni? Who— Not _Giovanni Zabini_? When was _this_, Narcissa?"

"Before we started courting, Lucius, and before I learned he was a wizard's wizard, _obviously_." Mother, having gone positively _scarlet_, made a valiant attempt to change the subject. "Why, Sirius, by all the gods and Powers, would you do something like that? What could _possibly_ have possessed you...?"

"Well, I was fourteen, so presumably I was just being an annoying little shite. Besides, that entire conversation was _fascinating_. I mean, yeah, using the Cruciatus as foreplay was a bit _much_, but I'd never heard of half the shite they got up to, so—"

Lord Black's voice abruptly cut out under the same silencing curse. "Shut up and watch the quidditch, Sirius."

He glared at Mother and cast another illusion — _Cissy's being mean to me AGAIN _— before sinking into a _very_ dramatic pout.

Ireland scored three more times before Black apparently looked over in their direction again. This time, rather than shout over the cheering (_Ninety-ten to Ireland!_) she cast an illusion of her own, a dot of light 'writing' _You probably deserve it_ in the air.

_Yes, and?_

_Shut up and watch the quidditch like a good boy, and you can have a biscuit when we get back to the tent._ This one was followed by a _very_ bad sketch of a dog sitting and staring off into space. (Apparently Black thought it was fairly pathetic, too, as she felt the need to label it _you_, with an arrow when she was done.)

_Fuck you, Bella_, Lord Black projected, though his shoulders were shaking in silent laughter. Everyone knew, now, that he was a dog animagus — it had come out at his trial — and no one seemed to be the _least_ bit surprised.

_Do I look desperate to you?_

"Okay, that's it," Weasley muttered. She cast a finishing charm at the glowing words cluttering up the air in front of her and turned around to kneel on her chair, obviously planning to tell Black off — Mother and Father appeared to be having some argument of their own behind an anti-eavesdropping charm — but before she said a single word, she let out a little squeak of surprise. "_Dumbledore_?"

"What?" Draco tore his eyes away from the match again to see that the Headmaster (and still Chief Warlock, if only just) had indeed just entered the box, wearing robes that appeared to have been cut from a Leinster flag, and a more severe expression than Draco had ever seen on him. Well, in person — the photo in the papers after he'd just barely managed to hold on to his position in the Wizengamot (taken on his way into the meeting) had been every bit as furious and determined.

Still, he sounded normal enough as he said, "_Harry_, my boy! I've been looking _everywhere_ for you!"

Potter blinked at him as though he couldn't fathom what was going on here, that ridiculous disguise of his making him look even more stupid than usual. "Headmaster?"

"Your Excellency?" That was Director Crouch, from International Cooperation. He had been running around all evening in a minor panic — understandable, not only had they built the bloody box too small, but the Irish muggle politicians the Blacks had somehow managed to get here were apparently entirely unexpected. Well, Draco _assumed _the Blacks were to blame, they _had_ shown up together (with _Saoirse _bloody _Ghaelach_), on an ancient flying carpet they'd apparently brought from one of the Black properties, because there weren't any bloody _lifts_ in this ridiculous, poorly designed stadium — _Draco_ had had to use the _stairs_, like a bloody _commoner_!

But he digressed. Crouch, who'd seemed on the verge of a nervous breakdown since the Malfoys had made it up to the box, now sounded outright _frightened_. "We weren't expecting— You must allow me to introduce you—" He switched to Bulgarian, chattering to the Bulgarian Minister, who cut him off almost immediately with a dismissive wave and a single sharp sentence.

Dumbledore, meanwhile, had begun to assure Fudge, "Oh, no, I shan't be staying long, that's _hardly_ necessary—"

"Nonsense, there's plenty of room!" (Well, there was _now_.) "Conjure yourself a chair!"

Ireland scored again, but this time, the only person in the box who jumped up to cheer was Black. Bagman, apparently confused by the lack of enthusiasm behind him, briefly broke off his commentary to see what had happened, though to his credit he picked it back up almost at once — the show must go on, and all that. Everyone else, who had been staring at Dumbledore or Fudge or Crouch or even Potter, turned to stare at Draco's mad cousin, who looked around, apparently unconcerned with about sixty foreign dignitaries and influential politicians and Irish separatists and _Weasleys _staring at her. "Ireland scored. Are we not supporting Ireland anymore?"

Cursebreaker Weasley — the one with the cool earring and the dragonhide jacket — pulled her back into her seat, smirking and murmuring something too quietly for Draco to make out over Female Weasley groaning in his ear, "Nothing good can come of this," and Mother rising smoothly to welcome the Chief Warlock, inquiring politely as to his business this evening, since he _clearly_ wasn't here for the match.

"Ah, well, I simply heard that the Blacks were to be here this evening, and wished to take the opportunity to assure myself that Mister Potter is safe and well after...his abrupt departure for his summer abroad."

Lord Black attempted to respond to that, but he was still silenced, so Black got there first. "Sirius told you he was fine _weeks_ ago. Are you sure you're not here to abruptly remove him to the custody of a pair of abusive muggles under the mistaken impression that he needs to spend more quality time trapped in the suburban nightmare they call _home_?"

"Perhaps this is something better discussed in relative privacy," Mother suggested, in that _not really a suggestion at all _tone she did so well.

Dumbledore glanced around at the rest of the box, then, after a few _very_ long seconds, made the right choice (doing as Mother said was _always_ the right choice, in Draco's experience), nodding and gesturing toward one end of the box. "After you, my dear."

Mother shot the Headmaster a sharp look, but didn't actually correct his overly-familiar address, just led the way to the back of the room, followed closely by Lord Black (whom she surreptitiously un-silenced). Draco tried to follow as well — he'd had to get up to let Lord Black out of the row anyway, and whatever was going on, he wanted to know (no one ever told him _anything_), even if this _was_ the _most _inconvenient time to hold a meeting in the history of _ever_ — but was stopped by a sharp shake of his father's head.

Black vanished her own seat rather than climb awkwardly over the knees of everyone else in her row, and stalked toward the corner Dumbledore was currently casting anti-eavesdropping charms around. "Weasley, I'm probably going to need someone to explain how blood wards work in about three minutes. You know, a qualified, adult-looking person."

"Is that your way of saying, _Bill, will you please back me up, here?_"

"Was that not obvious?"

"Obvious, yes. Presumptuous, also yes." Cursebreaker Weasley stood with an easy shrug, even before he finished implying that he might have said _no_, meandering toward the Leaders of the Light and the Allied Dark, and the Head of one of the few remaining Most Ancient Houses as though this was neither very intimidating company nor a terrible imposition because Ireland was up by one-twenty and there was still no sign of the snitch, and it was the bloody _World Cup_. (Draco wasn't _entirely_ displeased not to have been included in the meeting, under the circumstances.)

Potter, like any sensible quidditch fan, hadn't moved.

Black, when she realised he wasn't there, stalked back. "Come on, Harry, this _is_ about you!"

"But, Lyra, it's the— Can't this wait until after the match?"

"No. Blame His Excellent Timing, he's the one who just _showed up_. Come on."

"But—"

"You can get the memory from Blaise later."

Potter pouted, still looking stupider than usual with his hair pulled away from his face and his eyes all _grey_ instead of their usual bright green. "_Fine_. Let's just make this quick," he muttered, sidling down his row, clearly keen on getting this over with. Good luck with _that_. Dumbledore wasn't exactly what one might call _accommodating_, and the Blacks were mad about their Family, everyone knew that. (See Mother involving herself in the impending Potter custody dispute, despite having no good reason to do so.) Trying to force the last member of any Noble House to live with _muggles_ was akin to sacrilege to any right-thinking mage, and Potter was Lord Black's _godson_. If the Chief Warlock actually _did_ manage to get Potter away from them, they'd probably murder the muggles in question and take him right back, laughing in the old man's stupid bearded face the whole time.

But, Draco decided, it wasn't _his_ problem — not when Mullet had just stolen the quaffle from Levski with... It _kind of_ looked like a Sloth-Grip Roll, but she _let go_ halfway through it, swung down as she was coming in on the Bulgarian's left, and plucked the ball from under his arm in mid-roll, without even slowing down. He'd gone several meters before he realised what had happened. She'd already passed it off to Moran and come around to take stock of the pitch, apparently taking a breather. (Draco didn't blame her, they'd hardly even _slowed down_ since the beginning of the match, and flying like _that_ had to be exhausting.) She twiddled her fingers at the Bulgarian from about a meter up, an enormous illusion of her pleased smirk projected on screens for those who _hadn't _bought omnioculars.

Yeah, this was _much_ better than politics.

፠

This conversation had hardly even started, and it had already begun to go wrong. Not that Albus could even say he was particularly surprised — that did seem to be the theme of the summer.

In part, he'd been operating on outdated information. He'd composed a list of people he expected to be in the top box: Crouch and Bagman, of course, Fudge and a couple of people from his office, a Bulgarian delegation, the Malfoys, the Blacks (Sirius, Lyra, and perhaps a couple of the Tonkses) and, most importantly, Harry. The conversation would be relatively private, considered only by those directly involved — Crouch, Bagman, Fudge, and the Bulgarians obviously had no reason to participate, and while Narcissa was an aggravating meddler, her enmity with Sirius, stretching all the way back to their childhood, would, he had thought, likely prevent her from forcing her way in uninvited. In the unlikely event that she insisted on involving herself, she could almost certainly be counted upon to side against Sirius.

Despite the venue being admittedly inappropriate, it would, Albus had thought, be perfectly functional, and might even catch the Blacks off guard. They could hardly have expected him to confront them in such a public place, he couldn't imagine they would have brought Harry here if they'd anticipated such a move on his part. But it was of paramount importance that Harry be returned to his aunt's house, not only to maintain the wards but to maintain the relationship between the boy and his muggle family. All too often, muggleborns drifted away from their parents and siblings as they became more involved in the magical world, and without those connections to ground them, it was only too easy for them to...lose their way, abandoning the morals and principles with which they had been raised in the pursuit of knowledge and magic and power.

While he could hardly claim that the Blacks were less capable of protecting the boy than Albus himself, given the resources at their disposal, he could and _did_ have his doubts about whether they could be...the sort of influence Harry would need in his life, in order to be an effective foil to Tom's evil. It was, of course, sometimes necessary to fight fire with fire, but embracing darkness, even to fight a worse evil, could only corrupt, in the end — and given the developments of the past weeks, he couldn't stop himself wondering whether that wasn't exactly what Tom would want, to corrupt the boy, rather than turn him. After all, what might Lily have become, if she hadn't died?

Albus knew, of course, that there was very little chance that Lyra could be swayed, but Sirius was clearly more vulnerable to his influence — and, now, had legitimate authority over her as the recognised Lord of her House — and Harry was likely to be far more open to returning home for the last weeks of the summer than the Blacks were to allow it. If he could only _talk_ to the boy, he'd thought, he stood a _very_ good chance of turning the tables on that infuriating girl...

But the necessary confrontation had almost derailed before it'd even begun. Albus had been taken aback, for a moment, to notice there were _far_ more people in the box than he'd expected, enough that the space _had _to have been expanded at some point after construction. (Something about the magic in here felt unstable, in fact, someone must have whipped out a temporary solution at the last minute.) He'd been especially surprised to recognise _Michael Cavan_, the Tánaiste of _muggle Ireland_. For only a couple seconds, he'd been distracted with thoughts of _why_ the muggle politician was at the World Cup, _how_ he'd even gotten here — but then he'd recognised Síomha Ní Ailbhe, of all people, sitting next to him. And there was Fionn Ingham, and _that_ was Clíodhna Ní Chaoimhe...

Apparently, Saoirse Ghaelach was forming closer ties with the muggle Irish Republic. That was...concerning. It did make sense, now that he thought about it — the Republic had confirmed they were sending a delegation to Hogwarts for the Triwizard Tournament, thanks to those unauthorised invitations that _infuriating_ Black girl had sent out, but, bafflingly, had insisted on arranging their own transportation and security. The assumption in the Muggle Liaison Office was that the Republic was getting assistance from Irish muggleborns. There had been precious little _evidence_ behind that assumption — it was a common paranoia among purebloods that muggleborns would retain their loyalty to the culture of their birth, concerned they would betray the mages to the muggles somehow — but it hadn't seemed entirely unreasonable, in this case.

If _Saoirse_ was involving themselves, though...

(Albus belatedly realised he was going to be forced to host _Síomha Ní Ailbhe_, at _his_ school. He didn't like this. He didn't like this _at all_.)

It was impossible to miss that most of Arthur and Molly's family were also present, their distinctive red hair marking them out in the crowd. It actually took several seconds longer for Albus to spot Harry than to identify their youngest boy, Ronald. The Blacks had apparently decided to disguise him for the event, though only superficially. He _was_ concerned to realise, when he finally spotted the boy, that Harry and Ronald weren't sitting with each other. He'd been under the impression they were the best of friends, but now... Perhaps Ronald being pulled out of school at the end of winter had presented...difficulties, for their relationship. Albus _had_ tried to convince Molly to change her mind — not simply for Harry's benefit, no, he doubted the isolation of being kept at home and away from his friends at Hogwarts would do Ronald any good either — but the fiery-willed woman had been adamant.

No, instead it was Blaise Zabini sitting at Harry's side.

Blaise Zabini, who was, in _so_ many ways, very much his mother's son — charismatic and manipulative, with the added advantage of legilimency on his side. Were it not for the fact that Blaise, according to Severus, had no great ambitions of his own, Albus might have suspected him of being on a path to become the next Tom Riddle. As things stood, he could only suppose that he was working to further his mother's goals, whatever they might be, and however young Harry's ensnarement might factor into them.

Albus would admit to having a...difficult history, when it came to Mirabella Zabini. He had been, perhaps, predisposed to suspect her, more than was justified — there had long been a rumour that the infamous Lady Grace had been born to the Zabinis, an old but otherwise unremarkable Venetian family. He recalled wondering, when her name first appeared on the list of incoming students, if this Mirabella had had any contact with Lady Grace, if she knew anything about her, and after her Sorting, if the international thief and conwoman had had any...untoward influence on the young girl. The close association she had formed with Bellatrix (the two had been virtually inseparable for years) had only reinforced that suspicion. They'd been quite the pair, Bellatrix cold and vicious and dangerous — rather obscenely so, for a child her age — and Mirabella warm and charming and charismatic...

...rather obscenely so, for a child her age. Now Albus suspected Lady Grace truly _was_ a Zabini, and truly _had_ had some influence on Mirabella — it simply wasn't natural for a child that young to be _quite_ that adept a manipulator without some external guidance. It was a scandalous thought, but there it was.

But despite his suspicions, Mirabella had made no overt political moves. She charmed her classmates and professors, but hardly positioned herself as an outright _leader_ (that was Bellatrix's position). And when she left school, it was with no apparent plan other than to marry well and become a society lady (despite her common background, and her long-established relationship with the Blackheart). And then, the first overt power play she _had_ made... Well, it had hardly matched his expectations of her.

It wasn't lost on Albus that the cessation of hostilities back in '81 was almost entirely due to the efforts of Lily and, of all people, Mirabella. Lily had defeated Tom, yes, but it had been Mirabella who'd negotiated the Truce in the aftermath. The Ministry had still been scrambling, the _Order_ had still been scrambling, it had been _chaos_ those first couple weeks. If not for Mirabella exploiting her connections in both the Death Eaters and the Ministry, who knew how long the violence might have continued? Mirabella might well have saved _hundreds_ of lives.

(However much he might avoid crediting her for it publicly.)

And these days, well, he couldn't say he was _personally_ pleased with her work at the Department of Education — as the Headmaster of Hogwarts, it was simply his duty to maintain the autonomy of his school however he could — but he couldn't deny she... Well, as much as he might hate to admit it, Mirabella was an _excellent_ Director of Education. Her overhaul of the licensing process for Mastery applicants, her review of the OWL and NEWT standards... Even her attempts to dictate changes to the internal operation of schools throughout the country, he couldn't say hers were _bad ideas_. Most of the time, she even had the right of it — which was part of what made it _so frustrating_ to try to fight Ministry overreach in places it had no right to impose itself, the things she was trying to accomplish were perfectly reasonable, but for that it was the Ministry _forcing_ them to do it! It would be so much _easier_ if she weren't doing good work, if her demands were obstructive or punitive, but as it was...

He was increasingly convinced, as the political situation worsened, that he was ultimately going to lose his struggle against the Department of Education. And he couldn't even be certain this was a bad thing!

So, on the surface of it, Mirabella's interest in Harry's life was hardly cause for concern. Despite her closeness with Bellatrix and the connections she had maintained with even the worst of the Dark in the days since the end of the War, she _certainly_ wasn't a Death Eater herself — she spent much of her time in the muggle world these days, had even _married_ a muggle, _twice_ — and, so far as her professed and demonstrated politics went, wasn't too frightfully awful of an influence. Certainly no worse than Albus had thought Lyra Black might be, before the _horror_ of the end of term.

The _concern_ was that the _surface_ might not be at all representative of Mirabella's motives and ultimate goals.

When she'd decided to establish a place for herself in the political sphere, she had moved quickly and decisively, with goals clearly in mind. Albus could not bring himself to believe that her wrangling a position at the head of a Department, promoted over candidates much older and more experienced, over candidates who were more _qualified_ (at least on paper), despite having no political background or experience only ten years before, was pure accident and opportunism. One might be elevated to Chief Warlock for an act of heroism without truly knowing anything about the position or how to use it, but in many ways, the Chief Warlock was a figurehead. The Wizengamot could and would work around any incompetence or ignorance on Albus's part — and _had_, for the first several years of his tenure in that position. In contrast, it would be immediately obvious if a Department Director was incompetent, and those incapable of performing the duties of their position and managing the vipers' nest of interdepartmental politics would be quickly driven out by cutthroat subordinates itching for advancement.

Before November of Nineteen Eighty-One, however, Mirabella had appeared to be little more than a flighty girl who had been tremendously unlucky with her first two husbands dying in completely inconspicuous circumstances. She was an incorrigible flirt who enjoyed pretty dresses and parties, and generally came off as clever and witty, but very superficially so. The worst that would have been said about her, in her first decade or so after leaving school, was that she was a social climber (the nobility tended to disapprove of commoners attempting to become upwardly mobile, even commoners so charming as Mirabella Zabini) and completely shameless in her romantic affairs (the commoners tended to value monogamy far more than the nobles, whose marriages were most often arranged, matters of business over pleasure). They might, perhaps, have objected to the company she kept, but as the War had grown more overt, she had publicly distanced herself from it (and Bellatrix), maintaining a relatively neutral political position (insofar as promiscuous party-girls best characterised as _the sort of person written about in gossip columns simply because she was young and pretty and glamorous, even when suffering the tragic loss of her latest husband_, could be expected to express political views).

It had taken far too long for Albus to see it, but Mirabella Zabini had always preferred to be the power behind the throne, as it were, positioning herself to hold _influence_ rather than overt _authority_, guiding those who _did_ hold authority into positions of greater power, and herself along with them. Even when she was a student... Bellatrix had taken advantage of their social position to further Tom's goals among the students, but she would have had no reason to further the standing of a relatively poor, foreign commoner such as Mirabella among their peers, suggesting that Mirabella had been somehow instrumental in their initial rise to prominence within Slytherin. (Most likely by acting as an intermediary for Bellatrix, who, like many children of the nobility, had led a relatively sheltered, isolated life before coming to school, and so had been _woefully_ lacking in social skills at the age of eleven.)

He truly could not fathom why she might have decided to involve herself _here_, what she hoped to achieve by inserting herself into Harry's life. Yes, Harry would — one day, after Voldemort was finally defeated — be a powerful, influential member of the Wizengamot, but there was nothing he might help her achieve that she could not accomplish on her own or with the assistance of the Blacks, given that they were now (for better or worse), an active political power again. Certainly not in the short term, in any case.

Moreover, he could not fathom why she had apparently decided to insert herself into this conversation, and yet there she was, making her way across the box toward the corner he had...appropriated for the confrontation, despite the Potter situation being _distantly_ her business at _best_. (Being Mirabella Zabini, of course, she was incapable of walking twenty feet without acquiring a man to escort her — Bill Weasley, Molly and Arthur's eldest, had apparently been ensnared.)

His uncertainty regarding her motives made him rather...uncomfortable with her presence — understandably so, he thought. He also thought, however, that she could be depended upon to act as a moderating force within the discussion. That _was_, after all, the role she had taken for herself in the political scene at large. In fact, he had been and was still rather surprised that she hadn't been appointed to some office in International Cooperation, rather than Education — what Bartemius had been thinking, refusing to allow her into the diplomatic corp, Albus would never know.

In any case, it wasn't Mirabella's participation (or that of her captured Weasley) that concerned him most — it was Narcissa's.

For some entirely inexplicable reason, Narcissa had clearly decided to stick her nose in as well, and moreover, apparently had decided to ally with her least favourite cousin, a man with whom she was incapable of spending five seconds before their lifelong rivalry began to express itself in the form of childish sniping on both sides — against him! Yes, it was well known that Narcissa had been sponsoring Lyra Black when she first appeared in Magical Britain. Until Sirius's name had been cleared (or perhaps until Andromeda had arranged for her to become the Acting Head of her House, he wasn't entirely certain of the legalities of the situation), Narcissa had been the girl's official guardian. So it was perhaps reasonable to expect her to support the girl if he were to attack her directly, but there was _no _reason _whatsoever_ for her to wish Harry more firmly under the influence of the Blacks — if anything, she and they were shaping up to be political _rivals_! Sirius's politics, while hardly as light as Albus might wish, had always been moderately progressive and extraordinarily populist for a man raised in a Noble and Most Ancient House, while Narcissa's could be summarised as expedient, with the goal of maintaining the current social order — _i.e._, with herself at the top of it.

That did seem to be the theme of this summer, didn't it? People who should reasonably have no motivation to cooperate, nonetheless cooperating in opposition to Albus himself.

As baffling as it might be to individuals with an incomplete understanding of British history, Albus hadn't been particularly surprised to see Tom and his Death Eaters face considerable opposition from within the Dark itself. Ars Publica, the name by which the Dark in the Wizengamot were traditionally known, had (among other issues) long been characterised by a rejection of outside authority in their affairs — Tom's Allied Dark, given they were united chiefly by their _fealty to a Dark Lord_, thus represented a stark break from the fundamental principles of Ars Publica, just as firmly as from the Light. Members of Ars Publica had a long history of opposing Dark Lords in the past, most famously persecuting the decades-long campaign against Ignatius Gaunt _and_ leading the resistance movement against Frances Cromwell. (Ironically, the most visible champions of _both_ those efforts had been Blacks.) He might not agree with them on much else at all, but he couldn't deny they were at least in accord when it came to their distaste for figures like Voldemort.

Of course, even ignoring the Dark Lord aspect of it, Ars Publica had other issues with the Allied Dark. As much as they might state otherwise, the sociopolitical stance of the Death Eaters was actually a characteristically _modern_ one — despite rhetoric claiming they represented a return to an older, purer magical Britain, the Death Eaters represented a radical break with the traditions of the true Dark, enough the majority of Ars Publica had wanted absolutely nothing to do with them. Some of them had, seemingly, found the Death Eaters even _more_ offensive than the Light did, on a personal level that didn't quite touch them, since the Light obviously had no stake in the question of what the Dark was "supposed" to be. There was still much the two largest factions of the Dark disagreed on — for example, Ars Publica was perhaps the most liberal faction in the Wizengamot when it came to rights for nonhuman beings, while the Allied Dark tended toward fervent opposition (which often put Albus uncomfortably on the _same side_ as the former on those issues) — enough that many of the most vicious arguments on the Wizengamot floor were internecine Dark squabbling.

Albus felt he could be forgiven for not seeing their alliance coming until it was already too late.

And Common Fate joining them? _That_ had blindsided him _completely_. The faction was, traditionally, led by the heads of the Bones and Longbottom families, _both_ of whom he had considered _firm allies_. In some ways, Common Fate had been behind him personally even _more_ strongly than the Light. For all their relative beneficence, the Lords of the Light _were_ still Lords — the nobility of their nation had their own established interests, to which Albus, as a commoner, would always be seen as an outsider and potential threat. While Common Fate _did_ share some of those same interests, obviously, their history did lead to certain important ideological distinctions.

It had taken some months in the Wizengamot for Albus to realise that calling the divide within the body a simple opposition of Light and Dark was a massive oversimplification; in particular, Common Fate were sort of both and neither. Their political tradition descended primarily from old pagan priesthoods, a small number of the most influential of which had been granted representation ever since the beginning — the House of Bones, one of the Seventeen Founders of the Wizengamot, had originally been a death cult of sorts, a cabal of literal _necromancers_ credited with the ability to speak with, and _for_, the dead. (There were numerous aspects to the history of magical Britain that were quite horrifying if analysed too closely.) These old cults had been oriented far more toward the interests of the commons than the contemporary nobility, and facets of that attitude had been retained, inherited through fifteen centuries of cultural drift. Albus, as the first commoner ever elevated to Chief Warlock in their nation's history, had seen a degree of support from even some aesthetically Dark members of Common Fate he wouldn't have anticipated, apparently just on principle.

Common Fate allying with the Dark against him, _that_ he would have never seen coming in a thousand years — Augusta and Amelia had _both_ lost close family members to the Death Eaters, some of whom _still_ held influential positions in the Allied Dark! That they would work together, that they ever _could_, was just completely _unthinkable!_

And it wasn't just the _Dark_ closing ranks against him, oh no, even people firmly in the Light had taken up the cause of his downfall alongside them. His relationship with the Lovegoods, and the peculiar conservative, pseudo-spiritualist, collectivist subculture they came out of (the direct descendants of the same religious cults Common Fate had risen from, in fact), had always been somewhat complicated, but he'd been taken aback by the sheer _vitriol_ Xeno had been throwing at him lately. They'd had disagreements in the past, yes, Xeno had had frank criticisms of his handling of the war — informed, he assumed, by his late wife Pandora, who like Lily had been both a member of the Order _and_ a shameless practitioner of _extremely_ illegal ritual magics, so coming at his critique from a unique angle — but his dissection of Albus's history and the assault on his record was on a scale and of a ferocity like nothing he'd done before. And, unusual for anything written by the notoriously eccentric man, people were _actually listening_ — according to their own numbers, the readership of the _Quibbler_ had _doubled_ in the mere couple of months since the Granger interview, a handful of his articles being bought and reprinted in papers across the country.

Albus had even heard rumours the _Herald_ was in talks with Xeno to pick him up as a regular columnist — _that_ was bloody _absurd_, he never thought he'd see the day...

And, perhaps the hardest betrayal of all, when the Dark had called a vote to remove him as Chief Warlock, the Light had stabbed him in the back — they had all voted against him, almost to a man. Albus had had no warning. In fact, only the _day before_, he'd been in a meeting with a number of influential Lords, where Llewellyn, widely considered the leader of Ars Brittania (the traditional, hard-line Light), had reassured him he had nothing to worry about. He'd told Albus, to his face, that they had the votes to defeat the motion, that they had nothing to worry about.

He'd lied. Llewellyn had looked at Albus, in the eye, and _lied_ to him.

The _only_ reason Albus was still Chief Warlock was because the _Dark_ had flipped, stalling the vote only so they could examine the shifting of the political winds.

Albus owed the Dark, including _Narcissa Malfoy_, for his continued influence.

Though it seemed, that influence was shrinking by the day. The motion to remove him as Chief Warlock had failed, yes, but nobody doubted it was only a matter of time, and his enemies were moving to excise any power he might have in the Ministry in the meanwhile. His allies in the DLE had been shuffled out of leadership positions. Mirabella had moved to ram through reforms while he was weakened. The DIC had already suspended his credentials to the ICW, it wouldn't be long before his (legitimate) diplomatic caché simply evaporated. Mysteries had ceased sending him regular reports entirely, certainly a sign that the days of his political career were numbered if he'd ever seen one.

He'd scrambled to protect his people, to stop the reins of the government from falling into the hands of the Dark, he'd fought to do as much as he could, but he knew he was losing. His influential position in the administration of their government was, he feared, about to end as swiftly as it'd begun — and, much as his nomination to Chief Warlock in the first place, due to the maneuvering of figures in the shadows whose motives or even their names Albus knew not.

And as intensely complicated as it had become, it had all started that day back in June, when Albus had been convinced, for a short, _horrible_ time, that Harry Potter was dead.

A misunderstanding Lyra Black was, intentionally or not, responsible for.

(And now, knowing that Tom was regaining his strength, on the move again, and Bellatrix out of Azkaban, in the wind, Albus couldn't help the paranoid suspicion that perhaps, just _perhaps_, whoever was pulling the girl's strings was working with Tom, as well — that it was all a single, well-choreographed plot intended to strip Albus of influence and power, weaken him so that he would be unable to effectively resist Tom's next bid to return fully to the land of the living and reignite the war as he inevitably would. It sounded entirely mad, of course, but such a thing would _hardly_ be inconsistent with the elaborate, overly-complex schemes Tom and Bellatrix had enacted over the course of the war. They'd staged a goblin rebellion as a _distraction_, for God's sake!)

All this he thought of as he cast his palings against the chance of any international dignitaries overhearing him insulted by a fourteen-year-old witch he was powerless to silence, because, as Sirius _had_ pointed out at the end of their last encounter, they had him over a barrel politically speaking, and he was hardly going to resort to violence in an attempt to teach the girl to mind her tongue and stop acting out. No matter _how_ infuriating she was, she was also just a child, at least in the eyes of society at large. If this _was_ all part of a larger and more elaborate plot, whoever had organised it had chosen their instrument well. Albus hardly wanted to be the sort of wizard who went around beating children into submission, much less _seem_ to be, and in any case, it probably wouldn't actually work unless he went so far as to kill her.

Exactly how much of Bellatrix's personality could be attributed to her association with Tom and the then-living Blacks during her formative years, and how much was simply genetic, Albus couldn't say. However, judging by the girl's complete disaffectedness in response to having blown herself up practicing runic casting and later (as now seemed to be the case) being _tortured_ by her fellow _students_ — whom the DLE _still_ had yet to identify — he was willing to assume that physical punishment would have as little effect on the Blackheart's daughter as it ever had on her. (Which was to say, none.)

Detention, likewise, had had no impact on young Lyra's behaviour — if anything, assigning such punishments over the course of the previous school year had only given her more opportunities to corrupt the staff. (Okay, just Severus, but that was _quite_ bad enough!) If he started taking points from Gryffindor instead, subjecting her to censure from her peers, she would doubtless convince them all that the House Cup was a Tool of the Man, used to Keep Them Down — Albus was fairly certain that was how Sirius and his friends had defended their own rampant loss of points in their time. (Somehow, it had seemed much more amusing in the Seventies.)

How, precisely, one was meant to enforce any sort of discipline upon a child uncowed by threats of punishment or social pressure or even _pain_, he had no idea, but quite frankly he was becoming ever more strongly convinced that it was not Lyra Black he most desperately needed to find a way to control. His best course of action at the moment (he suspected), was to discover the person or persons behind the campaign to discredit him over the past months, and apply pressure to _them_ instead — they seemed to hold some sway over the girl's actions, if not her attitude.

It wasn't Sirius, he knew. God knew the man had motive, having been locked up in Azkaban due to Albus's failures for all those years. He obviously couldn't have raised the girl, for the same reason, but it was hardly impossible that he had colluded after his escape with whoever _had_ to enact this plan against the man he held responsible for his incarceration. Albus did know, after all, that the girl had been in contact with the escaped convict, even if she _couldn't possibly admit it_. It had, however, been only too clear in their previous discussion of Harry's summer plans that young Lyra was by far the more..._forceful_ of the two of them, and he also knew that Sirius, though clever, had never been one to plot or scheme. It _might_ be Narcissa, or Zabini, _possibly_ — both were far more inclined toward such methods, and could potentially hold some influence over the girl — but he was quite certain that, if Narcissa had had a Black heir hidden away in the wings, she would have brought her forward when Arcturus had died. And Zabini...

Honestly, he couldn't see why Zabini would _bother_ plotting against him. Yes, they were at cross purposes when it came to the Ministry's interests in undermining his control of his school, but...

But she held the ears of several important people, and had ways of _convincing_ others to tell her information which was, in the right hands, potentially valuable. Given the degree of influence she'd demonstrated in orchestrating her truce back in Eighty-One and the fact that she had only become more prominent in society since — exchanging her youthful, party-girl façade for a more sedate, respectable persona within their world and making a name for herself in technology on the muggle side of things — it was not unreasonable to believe that, as things stood today, if she wished to take control of the government she could easily do so. She simply had no _interest _in doing so, nor had she ever shown any sign that she enjoyed pressuring people simply for her own amusement. Even if she _was_ killing off her husbands — which, at this point, was nearly an arithmantic certainty, though there was no actual evidence to that effect — he suspected that it was primarily for money or power, rather than self-gratification. And despite her close association with Bellatrix, she had never shown any great love for Tom. She had, in fact, profited immensely in his absence.

All of which meant that there was no reason for her to be behind Lyra Black's existence and/or the shambles that had become of his political career over the past two months. She had certainly taken advantage of the circumstances, but Albus doubted that she had engineered them.

A pity, really, because out of all the people with whom he'd ever known Bellatrix to associate, Mirabella Zabini and Tom Riddle were the only two who had ever seemed to have any degree of influence over her behavior. It would have been a convenient explanation, to believe that Zabini was manipulating her one-time lover's daughter in much the same way she had her mother. (A scandalous thought, but there it was.)

But no, for all his pondering of the subject (and despite Perenelle's insistence that there needn't be any sort of convoluted plot masterminded by some shadowy adversary with some sinister, unknown goals — she made it sound so..._ridiculous_, honestly!), the best Albus could come up with was that the girl was raised by one of the Black metamorphs or, less likely, one of Bellatrix's less well-known associates. (Because — sinister, unknown goals notwithstanding — she _had_ to have been raised by _someone_.) The latter possibility did seem rather...doubtful, though. Bellatrix had not, so far as Albus knew, ever had many _friends_, let alone friends who could be relied upon to carry out so delicate and demanding a task as raising her daughter. It was possible, he supposed, that she could have delegated the task of finding a suitable foster-family to Zabini, which would broaden the pool of candidates _considerably_...

He would have to try to work it into the conversation, he decided — see whether he could get a reaction from either of them.

Mirabella and her escort had nearly reached the line he had cast on the floor, delineating the edge of his anti-eavesdropping spells, when they were intercepted by a _very_ irate Bartemius Crouch. Poor Barty seemed to be having an even worse time of it today than Albus was himself, almost trembling with rage as he exchanged a volley or two with his counterpart from Education. Albus couldn't quite make out their words over Sirius and Narcissa's snide, passive-aggressive quips. It was _almost_ amusing, watching two of the most influential members of the Wizengamot putting on such a childish performance. But only almost.

"Why should any of that matter to someone like _him_? It's not as though he has any respect for the other traditions of our world, I can't see _why_ you would expect him to respect your rights as Mister Potter's godfather."

"Well, you _see_, Narcissa, he _claims_ to have Harry's best interests at heart, though he apparently hasn't any intention of taking Harry's opinions on the matter into consideration."

"Ah, I see. Yes, it's clearly in his best interests for the boy to have been raised _entirely ignorant_ of our ways."

"Fuck culture, what about ignorant of _magic itself_? What kind of _monster_—"

"No, Sirius, you're missing the _point_. You see, an ignorant Harry Potter is a _malleable_ Harry Potter — quite clever, really, if rather more _Slytherin_ than I might expect from our _esteemed_ Headmaster."

On the balance, he decided, their byplay was mostly tedious. Were they not still waiting for the _actual_ children to join them — Albus would have no qualms starting without the infuriating Miss Black, but there was hardly any point trying to convince Harry to leave with him if Harry wasn't _there_ — he would have long since interjected, changing the subject.

"Yeah, well, I hear politics will do that to a man. Something, something, corrupts absolutely, you know."

Okay, that was just insulting. Surely Sirius, as much as anyone, _must_ understand the lengths to which Albus had gone to limit his personal power, refusing to exercise it even in the most dire of circumstances. He _seemed _to recall the impetuous young man objecting rather strenuously to that fact, once upon a time.

"Knock it off, children," Zabini drawled, leading young Mr. Weasley across the ward line — she couldn't possibly have heard anything they'd been saying, but he supposed the specifics hardly mattered. "I swear, put the two of you in a room together, and suddenly you're eight years old again."

Embarrassed silence ensued immediately, giving Albus the opportunity to say, "Miss Zabini? Mister Weasley? I'm afraid I don't understand why—"

William cut him off, rather defensively. "I was invited." Presumably by Zabini.

"And I'm here to keep the children in line." She said this completely straight-faced, perhaps unsurprising, given that, as Bellatrix's long-time..._companion_, she would have been a figure of relative authority in the lives of the younger Blacks since they'd been very small, but still rather ironic, given the way she had presented herself for most of those years.

Both Blacks glowered at her. "Hey, we don't have to do what you say any— Wait, no, we're not _children_, Zee! Damn it!"

"I don't suppose it would do any good to tell you to mind your own business for once in your life, Mirabella?"

"Not a bit, Cissy, dear," Zabini said, her tone most _deliberately_ patronising, ignoring Sirius's objection entirely.

Well, much as he might prefer to avoid her, Albus was hardly going to object to a relatively neutral party enforcing some sense of decorum on those two. He cleared his throat. "And...Mister Crouch?"

("Oh, if I'm a child, that makes you a paedophile. Ha!")

("_Really_, Mirabella? _Sirius?_ What _would_ Bella say?")

"Oh, you have _some_ nerve, Mister Dumbledore, asking what _I'm_ doing here! _You're_ the one exacerbating an already delicate political situation by barging in to further this ridiculous, _petty_ dispute—"

("Probably ask whether we'd had a threesome with Nicky yet.")

("Ooh, that's a _great_ idea! We should definitely do that! I'm free this weekend.")

Dumbledore drew himself up with as much offended dignity as he could muster, ignoring the _highly_ inappropriate conversation behind him as best he could. "_Enough_, Bartemius! I will not be spoken to in such a way! I am still the Chief Warlock—"

("You're free _every_ weekend, Sirius. Getting drunk and shagging any random muggle who crosses your path doesn't count as _having plans_.")

"_Barely_," Crouch hissed, his voice full of scorn. "Meanwhile, I am still the Head of International Cooperation! Do you have _any_ idea how many difficulties you've caused for my Department this summer?!"

("I'll have you know, Cissy, I don't shag _every_ muggle who crosses my path — only the pretty ones. Also, I forgot, I was invited to a thing at a veela colony this weekend, but Tuesday is good.")

"I do believe I might have some idea, yes. It is _hardly_ as though I myself have been exempt from the fallout from that unfortunate..._misunderstanding_."

("I'm curious, Siri, is there really nothing more important in your life than having as much sex as possible, with as many people as possible?")

("I'm curious, Cissy, are you jealous?")

"Oh, is _that_ what you're calling it, now? Face it, _Chief Warlock_, you—"

"Now, now, Mister Crouch," Mirabella interrupted, her tone somehow both soothing and amused. "Given the delicate political situation at hand, this is _hardly_ the time for that particular discussion, wouldn't you say?"

("Of course not! I—")

Bartemius was neither soothed _nor_ amused. "Do _not_ talk to me, Mirabella! If it weren't for you and that– that horrid, impetuous, _mad_ little girl—"

("So you really wouldn't go to a veela orgy if you were invited?")

("Of course I should say no!")

"Oh, yes, how _dare_ Lyra take it upon herself to fulfil a treaty obligation that _both_ of the esteemed politicians before me seem to have been content to leave neglected, no doubt _entirely_ unintentionally. After all, what the muggles don't know won't hurt them, will it?" Zabini's eyes narrowed pointedly. "And honoring the treaties and agreements established for the continued peaceable coexistence of our respective peoples is _so_ tedious. It's a wonder _anyone_ bothers."

("_Should_? Uh-huh. Well, I'm not inviting you, because that's just _begging_ for incest jokes — I _saw _that look, Weasley — but if you just so happen to be anywhere near Barcelona on Friday or Saturday...")

("You can't just go inviting people to other people's orgies, Sirius!")

Somehow, Albus suspected that the devious witch was no longer referring solely to the 1913 Treaty of Anglesey — the unofficial truce between the former Death Eaters and the Light had been _perilously_ close to collapsing since it had come to light that Sirius had never been properly tried. That there would be trials for all suspected Death Eaters and that prisoners would not be executed were the only major concessions Bellatrix (or Mirabella, speaking on her behalf) had demanded.

If anything, Bartemius grew more furious in response to the thinly veiled threat, his face bordering on purple in his rage. He had, of course, been the Head of the Department of Law Enforcement at the end of the war — blame for the miscarriage of justice in Sirius's case could be laid at his feet as easily as anyone else's.

("You can when they're veela. The more the merrier. Also, I'm pretty sure I just said I'm _not_ inviting you, so—")

"Okay, I just _barely_ caught any of that, but were you just inviting Cissy to Barcelona this weekend, Sirius?" Lyra asked, dragging Harry across Albus's impromptu ward line by his elbow. "Because yeah, I can see Lucy being so bad in bed that she'd want to join in a veela orgy now and again, but—"

"I would advise you against finishing that sentence, missy," Narcissa snapped, interrupting her with a brief flicker of cold power.

The girl rolled her eyes, breaking the silencing jinx with a silent, wandless dispel — certainly a useful skill to have learned, but terribly disconcerting, in such a young witch. "Fine. What's up, Your Excellency? Has there been some political development that I'm unaware of?" she asked, taking the lead as though she was still the Acting Head of her House.

Sirius appeared content to allow her to do so, but Albus certainly wasn't. He ignored the girl in favour of addressing her legal guardian. "Lord Black... Sirius... I was hoping to speak to young Harry alone—"

"Not going to happen," the other wizard interrupted, his face twisted into a ferocious scowl.

"—_or_, at the very least, with the two of you together. Perhaps you would prevail upon your cousins to give us some degree of privacy? The matter we need to discuss is one of some delicacy, after all."

"No. Anything you can say to Harry in front of me, you can say in front of Narcissa and Zee. And Bella wouldn't go even if I asked her."

"And I invited William," the girl interjected.

"Right, so Bill can stay, too. Crouch can bugger off, though."

"I will do no such thing! You people have turned this event into a diplomatic nightmare, and I _will_ have an explanation!"

"His Excellency wants to take Harry here back to his abusive muggle aunt and uncle's house and make him stay there for a few weeks to reinforce the idea that that's his home, because he laid a fucking blood ward on Harry to protect him from the mostly-late Tom Riddle — Voldemort, that is—" (Crouch flinched slightly at the name, though he was the only one present who did.) "—even though it's not necessary for him to go back there to maintain the ward, and he'd be better off breaking it anyway, and in any case, His Excellency doesn't have the political leverage to force us to give him up. So I repeat, has there been some new development I'm unaware of? And if not, do you realise that you're interrupting the _Quidditch World Cup Final_ just to re-hash an argument we settled _months_ ago?"

"I think you will find, _Miss_ Black, if you think back to the discussion in question, that our dispute was in no way _settled_."

"Er...yes, it was. You demanded we give Harry back and I told you to go fuck yourself, and you tried to be all threatening, but—"

"Lyra!"

"I'm kind of in the middle of something here, Zee."

"Yes, and that something ends _now_. I've done nothing but deal with messes of _your_ creation all day. Now, the Chief Warlock is going to say his piece and we're going to reach some mutually unsatisfying compromise like the responsible adults we are. _You_ are going to stop being unnecessarily antagonistic and allow us to do so."

"Or else...?"

"Or else I'm going to strangle you with my bare hands, Lyra," she said lightly, her tone nearly as pleasant as the one she used on Crouch only a moment ago.

"I think she's serious, Bella."

"No, _you're_ Sirius, remember?"

"Shut up, both of you, before I _make_ you shut up!"

"Ah...do I really need to be here for this?" Harry asked no one in particular. "Because, there's, you know, the match, and—"

"Unfortunately, my boy, I'm afraid we won't be able to stay through the end of the match, however long that might be. It is _imperative_ that you be returned to your family _immediately_. In fact, I fear—"

"Like hell he will!" Miss Black interrupted. "Those classless _pigs_—"

"_Vox petram_."

Silver spell-light flashed across the space between Zabini and the Blackheart's daughter, too quickly for the latter to do much more than raise her eyebrows in surprise as her voice box was transfigured to stone. After apparently trying and failing to object verbally to the spell, the girl glowered at the older witch, and cast (_also_ wandlessly?! A _dispel_ was one thing, but...) a passable illusion of her own voice saying, "What the fuck, Zee?!"

"Someone once told me that there was no point making a threat you were unable or unwilling to follow through on. Who was that, again...? _Oh, yes_." She gave the girl a very pointed look. Presumably it had been Bellatrix. "Now, are you finished interrupting?"

"No! And you can't make me! I have every right to—"

Zabini cast another spell, this one silently. Albus didn't recognise it from the wand motion, either, but from the feel of the magic... Was that a _general nullification charm_? His estimation of Mirabella's abilities as a witch went up a few notches. Any spell that suppressed another mage's ability to channel or shape magic was rather difficult to cast, let alone to _hold_, even against an immature witch like Miss Black, who was staring at her now in abject astonishment — quickly becoming annoyance as she obviously tried and failed to break the spell.

Mirabella smirked at her. "I assume you also know the rule about underestimating people, simply because they aren't _you_?"

"Er..._don't_?" Sirius grinned. "Zee, don't take this the wrong way, or anything, but I think I might love you."

"That's cute, darling. Now—"

"Er, sorry, but...do I really need to be here for this?" Harry asked again, rather hesitantly.

"Yes, my boy, you _do_ need to be here — given that you are yet to have been given a say in the matter at hand, it is only right that you ought to have one now. For your safety and that of your aunt and her family, you must return to their home for the remainder of the summer. You see, I cast a very powerful protective charm on you, based on the magic your mother used to protect you from Voldemort's attack when you were a baby. So long as you reside with her blood — her sister, Petunia — so long as your home is with your mother's family, this spell will protect you—"

"Like it did when Voldemort was possessing the annual Defense sacrifice?" Sirius interrupted. "What about from basilisks? Because I hear those can be pretty dangerous. Honestly, you should count yourself lucky we're not pulling him from Hogwarts and homeschooling him for the next four years!"

"The decision of where and how Mister Potter will be educated is not yours to make, Sirius!" Albus snapped, failing to contain his irritation at the interruption. Harry had been softening, he could see it in his face!

"The _hell_ it's not! I'm his _godfather_, Albus! You might be the Chief Warlock—" ("_Barely_," Crouch muttered.) "—but if we bring a custody case against you, the Wizengamot will side with me, you _know _they will!"

Narcissa nodded her support. "I think you will find, Your Excellency, that the nobility take our traditions far more seriously than those who — through no fault of their own, of course — have a rather...less thorough understanding of said traditions."

Well, that _was_ quite a polite way to call him _up-jumped common trash_, Albus was almost impressed. "I think you will find, Narcissa, that I do still have some influence, despite your best efforts to thwart me. But that is neither here nor there. None of us, I think, want to see this dragged out for the court, especially since— You _do_ wish to return to Hogwarts, do you not, Harry?"

"Yeah, sure," he answered distractedly, peering past Albus at the quidditch players still zipping about. "I mean— Yes, I want to go back to Hogwarts. But I don't want to go back to the Dursleys. And, um...I don't really understand why I should? I mean, Lyra said—"

"Harry, my boy, I know you trust Miss Black, but she is _hardly_ a reputable authority when it comes to—"

The girl in question snapped her fingers several times, throwing a filthy glare at Mirabella before turning to young Mr. Weasley with a series of hand-signals which Albus recognised as the rudimentary sign language which had been developed to circumvent the difficulties most humans had in speaking Gobbledygook. Generally people only used a few specific signs to represent the sounds they were incapable of vocalising, but there were signs for the less foreign phonemes as well.

"Er... Apparently this is why I was invited, because while Lyra does know what she's talking about, I'm actually a reputable source on things like ritual-based blood wards. Also, Lady Zabini, Lyra would like me to tell you several things I am absolutely _not_ going to translate, but I'd say she's annoyed with you."

(Barty, who of course _would_ be familiar with the sign language, broke into a rather strangled coughing fit as he attempted not to laugh.)

"I got that, thanks," the Director of Education said drily. "And I _did_ warn you of the impending consequences of your actions, Lyra. It's hardly my fault you chose not to heed me."

Miss Black pouted at her enlisted cursebreaker, throwing a few more signs at him.

"Do you want me to back you up or not? Then you're just going to have to deal with it. So, my understanding is that these wards — it would be a blood ward, Potter, not a charm — are tied to the Evans bloodline and draw on the strength of all members of the family to protect—" The Black girl interrupted with another snap and another flurry of hand signs. "What do you mean it draws on ma— Oh, wait, yeah, that does make sense. But then..." Weasley sighed, seemingly _just_ holding back the urge to roll his eyes. "So this ward draws on the _magic_ of all the members of the bloodline to protect them and their household from the man Lily intended to protect her son from — assuming I understand what Lily did that night, they'd kind of just extend the soul-shielding effect she was going for, but since Lily's soul isn't in it anymore, they'd have to draw on everyone else's magic instead, right?"

That last was obviously a question directed at Albus, who quite frankly had very little idea. He had known, of course, that Lily's ritual had been soul magic — it had to have been, if she was attempting to counter the Killing Curse, but... "Forgive me, Bill, my boy, but did you just say that you _know _what Lily did?" Because so far as he knew, _no one_ understood what she had actually _done_. There had simply been too few traces to reconstruct it, in the aftermath of the destruction of the Potters' home. He had himself been trying to piece it together, off and on, for well over a decade, with no success.

"Well, I'm not _positive_, but Pandora had a theory that it was some adaptation of Iphigenia's Sacrifice, or possibly an old Sumerian soul-shielding ritual."

Albus sniffed, trying to keep his annoyance off his face. Of course Pandora had had a theory. He'd suspected as much back in Eighty-One — he had, in fact, suspected that Pandora might have helped Lily with whatever plan she had concocted, though she insisted that had she known what Lily intended to do she would have rather prevented it than provide her assistance. He had believed her — he'd never heard Pandora Sage-Willow _lie_ about _anything_ — but she'd refused even to speculate on what her fellow ritualist might have done, likely for fear of implicating herself. Even such an innocent and unworldly witch as Pandora had understood that the war presented a very specific condition under which certain exceptions would be made. Such could not be guaranteed if she were to have admitted to her expertise with High Ritual _after_ the conflict subsided. Not that he would have brought the matter to the attention of the authorities, but neither she nor Lily had ever truly trusted him. And he supposed he couldn't really _blame_ them, given that he'd made his disapproval of their methods clear early on, despite their efficacy.

"The real question," Bill continued, "is how she managed to destroy him before he could go and hit Potter with a second Killing Curse. Some sort of vengeance or justice ritual, obviously, but Pandora theorised she'd found some way to suspend it in a ward so that Riddle attempting to kill Potter would trigger it."

"Is that even _possible_?" Barty asked, saving Albus the trouble.

The young cursebreaker grinned. "If magic likes you enough, anything's possible. That's pretty much the first rule of ritual magic, right? But it's not unheard of — that _was_ why Pandora thought Lily might have been studying Sumerian soul magic, their ruins are kind of notorious for being laced with ritual traps. No one really knows how they did it, though, so she would've had to reinvent the wheel, there." He shrugged. "Ingham and I came up with a couple different ways to do something like that, theoretically. Though, being Lily Evans, she probably could have just batted her eyelashes at Adrestia and said _please_, so. I mean, did you ever _see_ her invoke the Powers?"

Sirius gave him a rather startled look. "When did _you_? Weren't you _ten_ when the war ended?"

Bill just blinked at him. "Eleven. Pandora brought her over to do some blessing on our house back in Seventy-Nine. Lily introduced me to Hestia and made me promise not to let the kitchen fire go out, because if it did, Hestia wouldn't be able to keep the Death Eaters from noticing anything odd about our family."

Before Albus could comment — he hadn't known about that particular ritual (he could only assume that Molly hadn't either, because she almost certainly would have asked him about it) — the Black girl snapped her fingers again, glaring at Bill, and signed a few words at him.

"Slow down, kid, I don't actually use the sign language, so... Look, can you just let her talk? I think she's learned her lesson."

"You clearly are not familiar with my niece," Narcissa scoffed, but Mirabella must have been growing tired of maintaining that nullification charm, because she raised an eyebrow at the girl in silent question.

The infuriating child, in response, gave her the same overly-elaborate bow of concession that the Gringotts goblins used to mock the more obviously racist of their human customers. It was so _very_ obsequious that it came right back around into a sort of sarcasm — still acknowledging that they had been defeated, but _only_ _for the moment_.

"If you continue to antagonise the Chief Warlock, I _will _curse you again," Zabini informed the brat, even as she released her spell and reverted the transfiguration.

"Yeah, yeah. What the hell even _was_ that? Because I _know_ you can't channel enough magic to just stifle anything I try to do."

"Ask Narcissa about it later, it was her NEWT Arithmancy project."

Lyra Black grinned. "You've been holding out on me, Cissy — you know adaptive specific nullification is supposed to be impossible, right?"

"Yes, well, I wasn't raised to have a good deal of respect for _impossibilities_. Did you have something to contribute to the conversation, or not?"

"_Yes_, but no one will listen to me if _I _say it, so I was trying to tell William to run through the likely outcomes of an attack on any member of the bloodline, given that the protection draws on the _magic _of the bloodline, and Harry's the only _mage_ involved."

Young Mr. Weasley grimaced. "Right. Well. Since Potter's the only wizard in the bloodline, it's very possible that, if he or either his aunt or cousin were actually attacked by Riddle — or his minions, possibly, I'd have to do a few tests on the anchors and the Dark Mark to say for sure — it might cause permanent damage or actually _kill_ Potter, drawing too heavily on his magic to support the protection. Assuming the ward was cast correctly. In my professional opinion, the best case scenario would actually be if it _wasn't_, because if it _was_, it would be more of a liability than a protection. Basing it on Lily's soul magic would give it more focus, sort of built-in intent, but there would obviously be other less useful biases, so..."

"The _worst_ case scenario, though, would be that they're strong enough to kill Harry burning possessed professors to death, but too weak to provide any general protection for the household simply by surrounding their home with light magic, like that ritual you mentioned Lily did on your parents' house. Which they are."

"And how would you know that, Miss Black?" Albus asked, quite certain that she knew because someone, perhaps the same _someone _who was behind her sudden appearance in his school, had gone to Little Whinging to investigate.

"Got it from Snape." _Damn him!_ "He visited the Dursleys after the Aurors visited _him_ asking whether he knew who might've thought it was funny to show up on Petunia Dursley's doorstep looking like her dead sister. According to him, they won't stop a Marked Death Eater harming the muggles, and they're not _comfortable_ to be around, but certainly no worse than that flaming peacock you keep in your office."

"Did he mention how he actually _tested_ whether they would stop a Death Eater harming Harry's aunt?" Albus asked, not entirely certain whether he wanted to know the answer.

"Well, he couldn't have cursed the bitch without setting off the monitoring wards, so I'm guessing he just smacked her or something to test them." The girl shrugged.

Sirius scoffed. "Typical Snivels. Finds someone who actually _deserves_ to be cursed, even has a good excuse, and he doesn't bother!"

"Sirius!" Albus couldn't help the appalled exclamation. "The woman is a _muggle_!"

"Yeah, a muggle who makes Walburga look like a kind, loving, mumsy sort of witch!"

"What the hell are you talking about, Siri? Walburga _was_ mumsy."

"Are you fucking kidding me? That woman was a bloody harpy!"

"_That woman_ was _your mother_, Sirius!" Narcissa snapped, even as the girl giggled and said, "Well, _yeah_, but like, a _mumsy_ harpy."

Had it been _Walburga_ who raised her? Sirius's mother _had_ become a recluse in the years following the end of the war and the fall of her family — Arcturus had made it known that she was quite mad, barred her from succession as the Head of the House, even, but perhaps that had been a ruse? It _would_ explain how the girl had so clearly been trained as a Black heir, and perhaps why she had appeared on the political scene _now_, rather than at a more opportune moment...though not who was directing the plot against him. Walburga had died...relatively recently, Albus thought. Hadn't that been one of the earlier rumours put about, that Lyra Black had been homeschooled by a witch who had recently passed away? _Hmm_...

"I don't see you getting all defensive on behalf of your _own_ mother, Cissy!"

"We're not _talking_ about Dru, Sirius! Though if _anyone_ was a _harpy_..."

"Narcissa," Mirabella said warningly, followed by, "Sirius," in the same tone. "_Do_ recall that you have an audience, and there _is_ a purpose to this conversation beyond your childish reminiscences."

The witch flushed prettily, looking down in a show of shame for having lost her composure. The wizard cleared his throat, eyes flicking from Mirabella to Albus himself. "Erm. Yes. Right. Sorry. Wards, and, er...stuff. Harry already said he doesn't want to go back to that bitch's house, so I'm not really sure what more there is to say, anyway."

"That His Excellency should let us take care of Harry, since _his_ protections are incompetently cast and ineffective at best, and dangerous at worst?" the obnoxious child suggested.

"The blood ward could just be weak because it's supposed to be reinforced by the familial bond between the members of the bloodline and the household, and as far as I can tell..." Young Mr. Weasley trailed off, obviously attempting to be tactful about the point, despite Miss Black already having baldly accused Harry's aunt and uncle of abuse, and Harry... Where _was_—

Harry had edged away from the conversation, slipping out of the privacy palings entirely to go stand at the edge of the box, leaning on the railing and cheering as Ireland scored yet another goal, bringing the score to one-seventy to ten, Ireland.

The Black girl apparently realised this at the same time Albus did. "Hang on a second."

She dragged the silly boy back by his elbow again, this time complaining audibly before he even crossed the palings that, "But Lyra, I already said what I had to, I just— _It's the World Cup_, Lyra!"

"Yes, and it's your entire bloody life and future and general wellbeing we're discussing, but sure, go watch quidditch, that's definitely more important."

"You weren't even _talking_ about me when I left, or the wards — you didn't even notice I was gone, did you? — and I don't have anything to say, anyway, just, you already _know _I don't want to go back to Durzkaban—" (Albus's lips twitched at the childish hyperbole, though he quickly schooled his features back into impassiveness. It would hardly do to seem as though he was laughing at the boy.) "—and yes, of course I want to go back to Hogwarts, even if I have run into Riddle there more times than anywhere else, and I don't _care_ about the wards, and I _know_ none of _you_ care what I think, so yeah, I do care more about quidditch, and—" His tirade was cut off by a roar from the stands all around them, the loudest yet. "What was—?"

"Bulgarian Seeker Viktor Krum — injured!" Ludo Bagman's magnified voice shouted over the crowd. "Bludger to the nose — nasty thing, if I do say so myself — but he's not showing any sign of pain, still circling the pitch, and Zograf's not calling for time!"

"_Damn it!_ What did I— What happened?!" Harry tugged his arm out of the Black girl's grip, rushing back to the edge of the box and demanding of the nearest spectators, "What did I miss? How did he— Oh, come _on_, ref! That's _got_ to be a— Wait! Is the referee on fire?!"

"Er, yeah, one of the bird-ladies hit his broom with a fireball just a second ago," one of the muggles informed him, staring at the pitch as though entranced, even as Albus approached, laying a hand on the boy's shoulder.

He flinched, whirling around to glare at whoever had touched him so unexpectedly, his expression softening slightly when he realised it was Albus, and not Miss Black coming to drag him away from the action yet again. "Harry, my boy," he began, not entirely certain how to get through to the boy, and especially not in the few seconds he had before the Blacks inevitably interrupted their momentary privacy. "I realise that sometimes families...may not get along. My brother and I... Well, I won't bore you with my own family drama, but suffice it to say that I _do_ understand how difficult family can be. But your aunt and uncle, your cousin, they _are _your family. I'm sure that behind whatever minor conflicts you may have with them, they love you _very_ much, and—"

Harry's expression hardened, eyes narrowing into hateful, scorn-filled slits. Between the expression and the outdated hairstyle the Blacks had foisted upon him, Albus was quite suddenly reminded of a young Tom Riddle, he would have been Harry's age now, glaring at him with impotent fury as Albus explained that he simply _could not_ allow the boy to remain at Hogwarts over the summer. The silvery grey they had coloured his eyes wasn't quite the icy blue that Tom's had been, before he had been so thoroughly corrupted by his darkness, but still, the resemblance was rather uncanny.

"No."

፠

"I'm sure that behind whatever minor conflicts you may have with them, they love you _very_ much, and—"

"No." Harry took a deep breath, glaring up at Dumbledore. It took nearly all of his self-control to keep his voice quiet and level, to not scream the word in his stupid, patronising face, to not fly into a rage at the suggestion that his desire to never see the Dursleys again as long as he lived was just– just because of some petty, childish _disagreement_ with them.

"I'm sorry?"

_You should be_. "No. They don't love me. They don't love me, and I don't love them, and we'd all be a lot happier if none of us ever had to see each other again!" Harry hissed...still in English (probably), and still quietly enough that no one turned to look at them, but he couldn't keep the anger to himself, he just _couldn't_. "You have _no idea_ what it's like, living with them! If you make me go back, I'll just run away again! I know about the Knight Bus, now, and I have money, and places to go — they won't even _try_ to stop me, and—"

"Harry..._Harry_," Dumbledore said, using that terrible, disgusting, _wise old grandfather who's not going to tell you a damn thing you need to know about why a motherfucking _Dark Lord _is trying to kill you _tone he used whenever he talked to Harry alone. "I know that—"

"_No_, you _don't_ know! You _can't_, because if you did, that would make you just as bad as they are. Worse, even! Did you _know_ they tried to _beat it out of me_, when I was little?" he demanded, desperate to make the old man _understand_ that he wouldn't, _couldn't_ go back there, that _no_ protection was worth forcing him to live with a woman who hated him because of what he _was_, and her stupid, thuggish family.

A tiny, troubled frown appeared, just a crease down the centre of the Headmaster's forehead, and he opened his mouth to say something, but Harry didn't want to listen to whatever it was. "They tried to beat _magic_ out of me! I was a _kid_, I didn't know what was going on, I was just as scared about suddenly appearing on the school roof as I was of Dudley and his mates — there were _so_ many things I never understood, and all they ever told me about magic, or my parents, or _anything_, was _don't ask questions_. Did you _know_ that I slept in a cupboard until I got my Hogwarts letter? Did you _know_ they tried to keep it from me?

"Oh, wait," he realised, even as he said it, "you must have, you sent Hagrid to give it to me, didn't you? Did he tell you that they hadn't told me _anything about anything_?" Certain phrases from that life-changing meeting in the small hours of his eleventh birthday were carved into his mind, unforgettable. "That when Hagrid finally came to tell me about magic, they called you a crackpot old fool who teaches magic tricks to children? And it's barely better, now! Did you know that there are _six_ different locks on my bedroom door? All of them on the outside, of course. Though they didn't get the bars on the window replaced after the Weasleys rescued me, summer before last, so I guess that's _something_. Did you know they lock my trunk up, as soon as I walk in the door, in the cupboard where I used to sleep? I have to break in and steal back my textbooks if I want to do my summer homework!"

He had to pause for breath, which left Dumbledore an opportunity to say, "I will speak to them, Harry. I think I can promise—"

"No. You can't promise _anything_. It doesn't matter what you _say to them_, as soon as you're gone... They're _scared_ of me, professor. They're scared of me, and I never _ever_ did anything to deserve it, and maybe they're right to be scared, because _they've_ done _more_ than enough to earn me hating them— I'm not saying that I _would_, you know, _do anything_," he backtracked quickly, realising as the words left his mouth exactly how bad they sounded, Dumbledore's eyes going all wide and alarmed as though maybe he thought if he made him go back, Harry would do something like kill them himself. "I don't want to have anything to _do_ with them, I mean. It's just— They might be more scared of you, enough that they'll smile and nod and agree to whatever you tell them they have to do, but as soon as you're gone, they'll go right back to doing everything they can to keep me away from magic, to control me, because they're _terrified_ that if they _don't_, I'll blow them all up like Marge, or worse, embarrass them in front of the neighbors! And that's not how family treat each other, it's just _not_."

"Harry, my boy, I know it may be difficult to resign yourself to spending any time away from magic, even only a week or two, but surely you must see how important it is that you not allow yourself to lose sight of where you came from, simply because you have gifts your aunt and cousin do not..."

_What the...?_ "What the fuck are you talking about? Sir," he added belatedly, upon realising that he'd just used the F-word _to Dumbledore's face_. (Fuck, Lyra was a _terrible_ influence on him.) "This has _nothing_ to do with the fact that they're f– _bloody_ muggles, or even me not wanting to go a week without using magic — have you even been _listening_ to me?" Actually, no, he decided, on second thought, it probably didn't matter that he'd just sworn at the Headmaster because he clearly _wasn't _actually listening to a _fucking_ thing Harry was saying, just lost in his own little world of memories and what he _thought_ Harry was thinking, even though he had _no_ idea...

Harry caught a flash of one of the memories, one he'd seen before, from a very different perspective, looking down on a boy about Harry's own age, his fear hidden behind fury as he argued, calmly and rationally, but with sharp anger behind every syllable, _not_ to be sent back to London, to the muggles, with their war and their bombs and—

"Has it ever occurred to you that maybe if I remind you of Tom Riddle so fucking much, maybe you _shouldn't_ treat me the same way you did him?" he snapped, before he could stop himself.

He felt his eyes go wide with sudden anxiety as Dumbledore glared at him, hardly making an effort to hide his own fear and anger at the idea that Harry could snatch a thought from his mind, even one so unguarded and obvious as that — he hadn't even been _trying_, he hadn't _meant_ anything by it. He was on the verge of beginning to babble apologies when he felt Lyra come up behind him, the tingling cold of her magic enveloping him before she touched him, wrapping an arm around his waist and resting her chin on his left shoulder like a much shorter Blaise.

"I'm sure it hasn't. Riddle wouldn't have a problem going to live with Petunia, he'd just compel her to ignore his existence, or maybe to obey his every whim, if he was feeling particularly sadistic. It's not like mind magic would trigger the Ministry sensors. In fact, you should probably just make that horse-faced bitch forget you ever existed next time you see her. If you happen to completely fry her brain doing it, well...oops? Accidental magic can be _so_ unpredictable, am I right?"

Harry bit his lip, trying not to laugh. There was just something infectious about the way she was giggling, even as she spoke, _clearly_ not serious, because who would really say something like that right in front of Dumbledore, but probably still willing to kill the Dursleys for him if he gave her anything even _slightly_ resembling permission to do so.

Dumbledore wasn't nearly as amused. Harry could almost feel the heat of his anger, rippling in the air around him. "Miss Black, this conversation does _not_ involve you!"

"Sure it does."

"You are no longer the Acting Head of your House, and even if you _were_, Harry _Potter _is not a Black!"

"No, but he's still Sirius's godson, and Dorea's grandson, and arguably it's _more_ my job to protect him now that I'm _not_ our Acting Head, because our Lord has to deal with political shite and make nice with outsiders like the Chief Warlock. The First Daughter's only real responsibility is to take care of the children of the family. You know, teach them shite, advocate for them...pick fights with arsehole adults who think they can get away with whatever they like because they're adults and they make the rules..." Had she just done something? Harry didn't think she'd cast a spell, but the temperature around them seemed to drop about ten degrees, the hot anger he'd been able to feel rolling off of Dumbledore suddenly vanishing. Well, not the emotion, that was still there, but... Had _he_ been doing something? "If I say Harry's part of my family, you don't really have the authority to say otherwise. Well, I mean, you can _say_ it all you like, but it doesn't _mean_ anything.

"So, go fuck yourself, Your Excellency. Harry's mine, you can't have him."

"Er... Lyra? Maybe you _shouldn't_ say things like that in front of..." In front of a bunch of foreign dignitaries who weren't paying them the _least_ bit of attention. Oh. Dumbledore must have done a privacy charm. He felt a bit stupid not to have thought of it before, given that he'd definitely gotten a bit louder than he'd meant to, snapping at the old man a moment ago. "Never mind."

"Harry's _family_, Miss Black — his _only_ living, _blood_ family — are his mother's sister and her son!"

"Since when does blood define family?" There was a hint of something in her voice there, some kind of challenge Harry wasn't sure he understood any more than whatever magical subtext he was _positive_ he was missing, but it didn't really matter, because, well, she _was_ right, wasn't she?

The Dursleys, for all they were his mother's relatives, had never treated him like family. They'd never even treated _Lily_ like family! He'd only ever heard Petunia talk about her that one time, when Hagrid had practically _forced_ her to. And, well...

The Blacks were _insane_, that was an obvious, undeniable fact. Living with them for the past six weeks had made it _very_ clear that Sirius and Lyra were both kind of unstable and just as fucked up in a lot of ways as he was — Sirius's parents were even worse than the Dursleys, and he still didn't know who raised Lyra, but he'd seen the scars on her back, so — but the one thing they had going for them, the one thing that seemed to keep them kind of...grounded, maybe, was the whole _House of Black_ thing. The Family. (They always said it like it had a capital letter there, like they were the fucking _mob_ or something.)

Sirius had tried to explain it to him, what it _meant_, to be a Black. To be part of the Family, or even just _a_ family. Harry had eventually cheated, used legilimency to figure out exactly what he meant, because he definitely hadn't been getting it. That whole _godfather_ thing was no joke. He kind of felt like Harry was his own kid, in a lot of ways. He also felt like he'd failed Harry, getting sent to Azkaban as he had, and that was a huge fucking mess Harry didn't want to touch with a ten-foot pole, but... Sirius _loved_ Harry. Harry wasn't sure he'd ever felt anything like that before, but...he cared about Harry the way Petunia cared about Dudley. He'd move heaven and earth to make him happy. He'd kill for him. He'd _die_ for him, if he had to. (It was kind of uncomfortable, realising that someone cared about him _that much_.)

Lyra... Lyra was completely incapable of explaining anything, ever. He'd cheated trying to figure her out, too, though not with legilimency. In a fit of frustration after a particularly annoying dancing lesson, he'd asked Mirabella why Lyra was so ridiculously obsessive about teaching him shite. From what she had told him, Lyra had been given a sort of model of what she was supposed to be, what the perfect, ideal heir to the House of Black was like, stories and legends and expectations and, kind of in the same way that she couldn't do _anything_ halfway, she'd just gone ahead and...become that. And one of those things she was supposed to do, one of the basic principles of what it meant to be _Lyra, Heir to the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black_, was taking care of the rest of them. Mira had flat admitted that she didn't think Lyra was capable of love (which, given that she was a clone of Bellatrix, Harry couldn't say he was _surprised_ about that), but that didn't mean she didn't care about them. It just meant that Family, to her, was more about duty than _feelings_. Her responsibilities to the members of her House and theirs to her, and how it all sort of balanced out. She _had to_ take care of them, because if she didn't, who _was _she? (Which sounded awfully broken, but was probably better than the psychotic Dark Lady alternative.)

_Family_, by the Blacks' definition, was about having a place to belong, people who would support you and protect you, fight the whole goddamn world for you if you needed them to, because you were _theirs_, and all the gods help anyone who tried to hurt you or take you away from them. The worst thing a Black could be was a Blood Traitor — not like Malfoy and his cronies used it to mean anyone who didn't kiss their inbred, pureblood arses all the time, but literally a traitor to their own family. Family who didn't act like it. It was kind of like the way wilderfolk defined species, really. You had to _act_ like family to be family. You didn't have to love them or even like them. You didn't even really have to _understand_ them. They might hurt each other, or lie and take advantage of each other sometimes, but they also _took care of_ each other, taught their kids things and protected them (actually _raised_ them). And when push came to shove, they had each other's backs. Like Sirius and Narcissa, just a few minutes ago. They _hated_ each other, couldn't even have a civil conversation, but the second an outsider threatened the Family (including Harry, which was just a _weird_ thought), they closed ranks against him.

And the Dursleys..._didn't_.

All _they_ had ever done for Harry was try to tear him down, turn him into an empty, magicless shell of a person, because they were _scared_ of him.

"They're...not my family," he said, hesitating, slightly, over the words, the unfamiliar idea. He'd never really admitted it before, even to himself. They'd always been the closest thing he _had_ to family, but they...weren't. They really, _really_ weren't. "The Dursleys. They've _never_ treated me like family. So...blood relatives or not...they're _not_ my family."

Was it weird, that it kind of felt like _relief_, saying that?

"Harry, my boy!" Dumbledore exclaimed, looking just as shaken as Harry felt. "You can't mean that!"

"No, I can, and I do," he said more firmly, growing more certain of it every second. "I don't care if Petunia is my mother's sister, she's not my family, and never was! Er...what was that?" he added, distracted from what probably would have been a long, passionate, and slightly incoherent rant by a sort of soft _twanging_ feeling in the air around him, and...

"You have no idea what you've just done, Harry," Dumbledore said, doom and disappointment heavy in his voice.

"Er...no?" He really, _really_ didn't.

"Don't mind him, Harry," Lyra said calmly. "You just broke his precious blood ward, but it's fine. You have _better_ family, now."

Oh. _Shite. I didn't mean to do that_. (Not that he was exactly disappointed that he had...)

"So, the way I see it, there's no reason to continue having this conversation, now is there, Your Excellency?"

Harry couldn't actually see her face at the moment, but he could just _imagine_ the mocking _I won_ smirk she'd be wearing. Dumbledore, on the other hand, _could_, and gave her the coldest, most _hate-filled_ look Harry had ever seen in return (seriously, that was like, _Snape-level hatred_), before apparating out of the box without another word, the space around them sort of _shivering_ — Lyra yelped and drew a handful of runes in the air with her wand which shot off toward each corner of the enlarged box, obviously holding her breath until it stabilised again.

"Fucking madman. Just because Escher traps aren't _deadly_ doesn't mean they're _fun_ to get stuck in — especially with a few dozen people who can't tell the fourth dimension from the seventh! But...I _think _we're good."

Er...ignoring that, even if they weren't it hardly mattered, because Lynch was diving, streaking across the field— "The snitch!" Harry found himself yelling, moving to the railing again without any conscious decision on his part. "He's spotted the snitch!"

Krum seemed to have realised what was happening as well, along with half the bloody stadium. Fifty thousand wizards surged to their feet, more rising as the Bulgarian seeker drew level with the Irishman, flecks of blood flying behind him as they raced toward the ground.

"Fecking hell!" one of the muggles shouted, leaning forward, over the edge of the box.

Harry heard Sirius screaming at the top of his lungs, a few feet away now, pressed to the railing as well. "Go on, Lynch!"

Lyra, still only inches from his ear, laughed. "He's going to crash again."

"Krum's not!" Harry yelled back — far louder than necessary, probably, but he was too caught up in the excitement to care, fumbling for his omnioculars, training them on the spot the seekers were converging on — he saw it, he _saw_ it!

And then he lost it, as Lynch lost control, plowing into the ground again, dirt flying up around him, and a horde of angry veela rushing out onto the pitch and—

"The snitch! Where's the snitch?" someone bellowed from...somewhere behind Harry, maybe a bit to his left — everyone was out of their seats, now, fighting to get to the front of the box, fighting to see—

The scoreboard flashed BULGARIA: 160; IRELAND: 170, even as Bagman's magically magnified voice called out over the crowd, "IRELAND WINS! KRUM GETS THE SNITCH, BUT IRELAND WINS!" A moment later, Krum came level with them, rising slowly, fist held high, a solemn salute to his people, despite the loss and the blood still dripping from his nose, staining his red robes a deeper scarlet.

And then he sank back down, into the crowd of veela and leprechauns and mediwizards and his fellow Bulgarians, the Irish team a short ways away, jumping and cheering before mounting up again for a victory lap, Lynch riding double with Connelly, barely conscious.

"Sit down, sit _down_!" a fussy, official-sounding voice called over the small riot going on as the Irish supporters in the box, including Harry himself and the random muggle bloke beside him cheered at the top of their voices, waving pennants and flags, and...one of those squeaking rosettes that had been on Gin's hat — where had Harry even _gotten_ that? It was as though it had just _appeared_ in his hand! (Oh, fuck it, it didn't matter!)

There was a bang like a gunshot, startling them all into silence. "Sit down so they can bring in the bloody cup!" that Crouch bloke snapped, before repeating himself in Bulgarian.

"And then we'll have the Team in to accept it!" the Minister added, which seemed to be a good deal more effective in getting everyone to sit.

Harry, at least, couldn't _wait_ to actually see them up close, in person — Sirius and Lyra and the muggle politicians had gone to meet the Irish team without him, earlier, but even they hadn't gotten to speak to Krum, and no matter how amazing the Irish chasers were (and they _were _amazing, Mullet especially), Krum was still the best player on the field. Even if they had lost... The longer it had gone on, the worse it would have been, ending it then and there was the best thing he could've done for his team, especially since he'd already had his bloody nose broken — Harry was surprised he was still on his broom! — _and _he'd _pulled off a Wronski Feint! At the World Cup!_

A sudden thought had him patting down his pockets for a bit of paper and a pencil, or a pen, a lump of charcoal — _anything_—

_Blaise, do you have a pen on you?!_

_Here, catch,_ he responded, amusement tingeing his thoughts as he flung a pencil from halfway across the box.

_I fucking love you!_ he thought (to even greater amusement), snagging it out of the air reflexively.

Now he just had to get close enough to ask, and maybe, just _maybe_, he could get an autograph! Wouldn't that be _something_...

* * *

_So, long chapter, lots of rambling, very little quidditch. In my defense, there was very little quidditch in the canon QWC Final, either. At least I didn't just say, oh, and then Ireland scored ten goals in fifteen minutes because the author can't be arsed to write anything more exciting. Also in my defense, we finished watching Buffy a couple of weeks ago, so of course I had to write 30k words of terrible crossover BS that I will definitely never be publishing because I hated the last season._

_I'd just like to take a moment to appreciate the amount of research Sandra puts into the political shite. I'm completely incapable of caring that much, but super impressed, anyway. —Leigha_

_I believe she's referring to Michael's section. Didn't take **that** much work, really, but okie-dokie. Speaking of, the "Provos" Michael references at one point are the Provisional IRA who, yes, are exactly who you think they are. No, he doesn't actually work with terrorists, he just knows people who know people. But then, nearly anyone as well-connected as him would, Ireland is a small place. —Lysandra_

_Lyra has gotten a lot of practice with illusions recently, given that basically everything she was doing to interact with the real world while she was intangible was an illusion. Sirius also mentioned that all the Blacks (and their closer cousins) learned to dispel that jinx Bella uses all the time wandlessly when they were really young, so her wandless magic in this chapter shouldn't necessarily be taken to mean that she's suddenly become completely ridiculous. (Dumbledore, however, doesn't know this.) Similarly, she definitely didn't pull off enlarging the box by herself. She just broke the existing wards (which she's been analysing for the past two days, presumably while Sirius was busy getting covered in glitter with scantily-clad Brazilians). Fionn and Bill actually enlarged the space and kept the whole thing stable._

_It should be assumed that Bill thought Lyra was from this time in an alternate dimension, until she immediately asked what gave away the fact that she was from the sixties, because she's really, really bad at this whole keeping secrets thing. Bill agrees not to tell anyone in exchange for stories about Ciardha, because he's a huge fanboy and it's **Ciardha Monroe**!_

_I really, really love innocent!Draco. Yes, he's a spoilt little twat, but he really does think the world of his father, and it's not his fault Narcissa decided to lie to him for the good of the family (because he almost certainly wouldn't be able to keep it secret that Lucius was a real Death Eater, if he knew). Similarly, It really amuses me that Harry puts Narcissa and Augusta Longbottom in the same category of **horrible people who shouldn't be in charge of the government**, just because all he knows about Neville's Gran is that she's super hard on Neville..._

_It also amuses me more than is probably reasonable that Sirius and Narcissa are bickering about sex in the background while Dumbledore and Crouch are having their Very Serious Political Conversation._

_And finally, a bit that I really wanted to work in, but it just didn't fit..._

Albus: Harry, my boy, I—  
Lyra: Excuse me, Your Excellency, but I think you must be mistaken. This is my brother, Marv.  
Harry: Lyra!  
Lyra: Sorry, _Marvolo_. It's a family name.

_Er...there are probably more things I was going to say at some point while writing this ridiculous monster of a chapter, but I can't for the life of me remember what they were. Christmas is terrible and I'm glad it's over? The next chapter is already mostly done, though we'll probably wait to post until we have at least one more done as a buffer._

_—Leigha_


	5. No one here gets out alive

"Draco. Wake up."

Draco wasn't _really_ asleep yet — he'd only gone to bed a few minutes ago, and there were only two rooms (not counting the loo) in the tiny tent Mother had _insisted _was all they needed for a single night away from the Manor. His transfigured bed was situated in the main kitchen/sitting room, so his parents moving around in the bedroom had kept him mostly awake. Not to mention, every time he closed his eyes, he kept thinking of Tricia Mullet and the things that witch could do on a broom. Still, he was sleepily out of it enough that it took a moment for his mother's words, and the tone of them, to register. "Mother?" he asked, scrubbing at his eyes with his palms, trying to force them to adjust to the light charm she'd cast — bloody blinding, that thing. "What's going on?"

"The Truce is failing, we're leaving. _Now_. Get up."

He pulled himself out of bed, a cold wave of fear sweeping over him. The Truce was... He couldn't even imagine a world without it, it had been there since he was _one_, when the war had ended. It was, at least the way Mother talked about it, the only reason they were still able to live in the same tiny society as Light fanatics like the Weasleys and not worry about being cursed in the back while they were walking down Diagon Alley. The only reason Houses like theirs had been able to retain their place in society despite Father being forced to serve the Dark Lord. Even after the Dark Lord fell and everyone who'd been under his Imperius broke free, there'd still been loads of Death Eaters out there, the war _could_ have kept going, if anyone had been inclined to pick up the pieces. Aunt Bellatrix had been arrested, yes, but Mother insisted that she could have broken out of Azkaban any time she wanted to. (Which Draco believed, if only because she and Black were apparently _the same fucking person_, and Black thought the worst thing about dementors was that they made other people _boring _when they came around.)

The only reason Aunt Bellatrix had _stayed_ in Azkaban was 'Lady' Zabini. (She always told him to call her Mirabella, but he never did, because, well...she was a _commoner_, and a foriegn one at that, and she went around marrying muggleborns and even _muggles_ (even if she did kill them eventually), and he didn't have any idea how she'd managed to make it so far in their society, or why Mother tolerated her company, they hardly had _anything_ in common, and it was clear Mother didn't really _like_ her being around any more than Draco liked Zabini being around, he wasn't about to speak informally to someone like _that_ no matter _how_ many times she made the offer.) 'Lady' Zabini had somehow convinced Aunt Bellatrix that the Dark Lord would have wanted her to wait for his return, rather than carry on the war in his absence, and then the Minister and Dumbledore that, as long as they didn't kill prisoners and gave everyone fair trials, Aunt Bellatrix would stay in Azkaban and they could all move on. Carefully. Avoiding even _talking_ about the War as much as possible.

But now Aunt Bellatrix had escaped (or been killed by the Ministry, but most people thought she'd escaped), probably because everyone now knew Lord Black never got a trial — and _he_ wasn't a Death Eater any more than Father, so he really _should_ have gotten one — and Draco had _thought_ everything was still going to be fine because, well, no one really _wanted _to go back to war, but... But he could hear screams in the distance, now that he was listening for them, and...

This was _bad_. This was worse than he had words for. He didn't even understand how it was _possible_, he just—

If he'd been standing, he thought he might've had to sit down, because he'd gotten _awfully _light-headed all of a sudden. But _nobody_ argued with Mother when she sounded like _that_, so just sitting there in shock wasn't really an option. That didn't mean he couldn't ask questions, though. "What do you mean the Truce is failing? Where's Father?"

Before the words were fully out of his mouth, however, he heard his father calling from the other room, "There are anti-disapparation palings up!"

Mother muttered something that sounded like Gobbledygook, though it wasn't a word Draco knew. "Are you a wizard or not, Lucius? Conjure something that would pass! Draco, get dressed! Two minutes!" She wasn't even looking at him, throwing things back into her bag. Her hair was plaited for bed and she was wearing the old grey and green duelling robes she favored over a nightdress, or even normal pyjamas. She couldn't _possibly _be planning on going out like _that_, could she?

"Are you sure about this, Cissa?" Father appeared a few seconds later to stand in the doorway, wearing his own duelling robes — cut the same as Mother's 'pyjamas', but black, and much newer — with a black cloak and a silver mask. A _Death Eater_ mask.

But the Dark Lord was _gone_! Draco couldn't _imagine_ why Father was dressed up as a Death Eater _now_ — especially if the Truce was failing! (How could the Truce _fail_? And _why_?) Obviously Mother had told him to, but surely this was the _last_ possible time that she should want to draw attention to his (involuntary) allegiance to the Dark Lord!

"Of course I'm—" Then she looked up. "No, not _a_ mask, _your_ mask," she snapped, conjuring something white and gold and throwing it at him.

"I don't know, Cissa..."

"What's the problem, Malfoy?"

"It's very _distinctive_, that's all," Father said, sounding rather defensive about it.

"Well that _is_ rather the point — put it on and do as I told you unless you want me to throw you to the wolves come morning!" He fixed the conjured mask in place with some sort of sticking charm, Draco thought. It _was_ distinctive, white with gold filigree along the edges, cut so that it covered only his right eye, nose, and cheekbone. It did absolutely _nothing_ to hide his identity. "Draco! Why aren't you getting dressed?"

Mostly because he didn't understand anything that had happened in the minute or so since she'd woken him. "You didn't answer my question. Why is Father wearing that? What do you mean the Truce is—"

"I _mean_ tents are burning and we need to get out of here before someone thinks it a good idea to—"

"Cissy! Did you know there's a riot going on outside?"

("—take revenge on a former Death Eater or two, so put your bloody robes on!")

"How the _hell_ did you get in here, Black?" Father snapped, wheeling around to face Draco's (_supposed_) cousin, who had appeared behind him, grinning (as usual), and hopped into an armchair, sitting on her knees. Draco glared at her, even as he started pulling his robes on over his nightclothes. Mostly for calling his mother _Cissy_. She had _no_ respect for her elders, at _all_. But also because, _really_? There was a bloody _riot_ going on, and she was just sitting there all casually, as though she was wasting an afternoon in the Slytherin commons (where she wasn't even supposed to _be_, anyway).

"How do you _think_ I got in here, Lucy?" Draco's eyes grew wide — that was even worse than _Cissy_! At least she was actually Mother's niece, Mother _could_ have given her permission to be informal. Draco didn't think she had, but Father _certainly _hadn't! And not even _Mother_ called him _Lucy_. "Nice mask, by the way. Very distinctive."

Father made an inarticulate sort of _gah! _sound, rather than reprimand Black for her outright _mocking _form of address. "You see, Cissa!"

"Go, Lucius!" Mother ordered him, in the same tone she'd used to wake Draco. Father looked as though he might object, but only for a moment before he turned on his heel and stalked out of the tent. "And don't get yourself killed!" she shouted after him.

"Do I even want to know?" Lyra asked, slightly amused and annoyingly unfussed as ever, thoroughly at odds with Mother's attitude. Apparently she didn't, because she continued, "There's an anti-disapparation paling up. I couldn't break it, so I'm guessing they've got a few mages actively stabilising and repairing the bloody thing."

"At least five, if they're following protocol. We'll head overland until we get clear. I imagine they're focusing on the Irish, and Mister Cavan's party?"

"Oh, yeah, or... I think so? We were at the victory party though, so there may be other targets I don't know about. Saoirse's holding them off — it's not just Death Eaters, I'm pretty sure it's all the British nationalists, you know, people who took exception to Saoirse and Michael _being here_. I heard there are Auror reinforcements on their way, but the whole Irish camp is kind of on fire, and obviously people took exception to _that_, so everyone's fighting everyone else, it's great!"

She _would_ think so, crazy bint.

Mother ignored his cousin's _highly_ inappropriate enthusiasm. "We'll head south until we get past the palings, then — I imagine most people will. Why are you here?" she asked, then started casting spells at Draco. Most of them he recognised — Snape taught all the Slytherins basic attention avoidance techniques, for emergencies (everyone just used them for sneaking out after hours, though). A few he didn't, but he couldn't exactly ask what they were because Black wouldn't shut up.

"Ah, well, Sirius ran off like the selfish little shite he is, left me to get everyone else somewhere safe, but then I realised we couldn't just apparate out, and Zee would rather be stuck in the middle of a riot than dragged through shadows, so we're heading back to our campsite — we're using Uncle Danny's old dragon-hunting tent, should be safe enough — and it occurred to me that if I'm playing First Daughter tonight, I should probably make sure you're safe, too, and if you meet us there, that's two doxies, because you'll be safe _and _you can keep an eye on Harry and Blaise and Zee while I go find Sirius — I can't _believe_ that fucking idiot pulled rank on me, just so he could run off and have all the fun— Seriously, if he dies out there, I'm going to resurrect him just so I can kill him again!"

Mother paused in her casting long enough to say, "Lyra! Duty comes first! Focus!"

"I'm _here_, aren't I? I'm just _saying_ if one of us has to get all the useless people to safety, and one of us gets to go play Aurors and Warlocks, it's way more important that Sirius doesn't die. He _is _the Lord of the House."

_What the_... Had she seriously just equated what even _she _recognised as a life or death situation with a bloody children's game? That was just..._absurd_. Absurd and _disturbing_. And _definitely _sounded like something he'd expect his mad Aunt Bellatrix to say, just based on the stories he knew. He didn't know _why _it had taken so long for it to sink in when Mother had told him Lyra was basically a copy of his aunt — in hindsight it was bloody _obvious_. It was an insane thing to do, making yourself a bioalchemy twin and raising her as your daughter, but Aunt Bellatrix _was _insane, _everyone _knew that.

Though, come to think of it, he _had_ believed it when Black said she'd used Black Arts to make him lose the last quidditch match of the year because he'd reversed Granger's knees, _and_ that she'd do something worse if he did anything else to the mudblooded bitch — he would say he couldn't believe they were dating, but actually that was perfectly in character for both of them — because, well, something about the look in her eye as she said it, completely matter-of-fact, as though it was _perfectly reasonable _to call on a bloody _god_ to get revenge for a schoolyard jinx— She just _wasn't_ that good a liar, so he didn't know why he was still so surprised when she came out with something absurd and disturbing, either.

"Sirius is a better fighter than you — _don't_ argue, Mirabella told me he wins four out of five when you spar — and we both know you're going to go back out and join in the _fun_ later, so just—" Mother cut herself off rather abruptly, apparently realising that _duty comes first_ applied to her too, and they had more important problems to deal with at the moment. "Yes, we can head to your site. Do you know Mother's adaptation of the Prince's Whipping Boy?"

"Er...yeah? Why?"

"Because I don't want my son to be murdered, Lyra!"

"What the _hell _are you talking about?" Draco interjected. He immediately flushed, as he realised he'd just _sworn at Mother_, but he really, really didn't like her talking about him being murdered. Plus, he knew the Curse of the Prince's Whipping Boy — or, well, he'd _heard_ of it, at least. It transferred pain and injuries from the caster to the target — one of the worse curses he knew of, outside of purely destructive ones like the Entrail Expelling Curse or the Constrictor, of course. But he didn't see why the hell it would matter if Black knew it or not, or what it had to do with him being murdered.

"Cissy wants me to curse her so that any physical damage anyone does to _you _actually happens to _her_ — I thought we talked about this, Cissy, not babying Draco. If he gets taken out, _you _can still get both of you to safety; if _you_ get taken out, you're both fucked. You _do _realise that, right?"

"Just cast the damn spell, Lyra."

His cousin rolled her eyes. At _Mother_. Even before she spoke, Draco was pretty sure that was a _no_. Which...he didn't _want_ to get hurt, but he kind of thought that sounded like a good point. Mother could be a bit..._irrational_, sometimes, when it came to his safety. "You know if I let you die — or even worse, if I help you get yourself killed — Bella will kill _me_."

Mother froze for the briefest moment, then grinned, pulling her wand and beginning some spell, even as she said, "You know, that's actually a _very _good point."

"What are you— _No!_ Cissy, don't you _dare_, you—"

Two flicks sent spell light flashing at both Draco and Black. She tried to dodge, but Mother apparently anticipated that — his cousin walked right into the spell. As soon as it touched her, a flash of heat raced over Draco's entire body, followed by a wave of cold, and then Mother _smacked _him, completely out of nowhere! He stumbled, pushed off balance, so it took a second to realise it didn't actually _hurt_.

_Black_, on the other hand, was rubbing her neck, a red, hand-shaped mark on her right cheek.

"Perfect." There was something vaguely terrifying about the smirk that accompanied that declaration. Mostly because it looked like it should be on _Black's_ face, not his mother's.

Black herself actually looked slightly shocked. "You are _such _a _cunt_, Cissy. See if I ever do _you _a favor again!"

"A compliment to the witch who raised me, I'm sure — and if you're playing First Daughter, you're obliged to protect the children of the House to the best of your ability."

Black apparently had nothing to say to this (not even that Draco wasn't a Black, which he thought was _slightly relevant_), as she just _glowered_ at Mother. "I hate you."

"That's nice, dear. Now, let's go."

"Draco, if you get _me_ killed, I'll find some way to make you regret it from beyond the grave."

Somehow, Draco didn't doubt that. And she already had plenty of things to make him regret. He nodded, trying not to look too terrified.

"I'll remove the spell when we get to safety."

Black scoffed. "Oh, yes, once it makes no difference to me whatsoever."

"_Exactly_. You could come with us, help me keep him safe," she said, as though this was incredibly magnanimous of her.

"I left Harry and Blaise in the middle of a riot with _Mirabella Zabini_ for protection," she pointed out, sounding _very _unimpressed. Mother winced. "_Yeah_. We'll meet you at the tent. Site Two-Seven-One-Eight. It's about half a mile east, next field, a bit closer to the forest. And Draco? Don't get me killed."

She vanished as suddenly as she'd arrived. Draco stared at the spot where she'd been standing for a long moment, weighing the probability of his _actually dying_ out there versus just getting hurt, and then Lyra making him suffer for getting _her_ hurt. "Maybe you _should _break the spell..."

"If she didn't agree with me, she'd have broken it herself. She'll be fine. Let's go. You have your wand?" Mother asked, moving to the tent flap and peering out into the night.

"What? Yes, of course, but... If she'll be fine, that means I'd be fine, doesn't it? So..."

His mother whirled around to glare at him. "We do _not _have time for this! Let's _go_!"

He went. (_No one_ argued with Mother when she sounded like _that_.)

* * *

_This was a terrible idea_, Gin thought, batting another curse back at the coward hiding behind a plain silver mask — it covered his entire face, all she could really tell about him was that he was about a foot taller than her, and twice as wide across the shoulders. His friends called him _Paulie_.

There were two of them, they'd been heading toward the fighting, the same as her. (Now the others, Scoffer and the Quiet One, were laughing at them from the sidelines of their fight — guarding their prisoners, mocking their friend and throwing the occasional curse at Gin when they got bored.) They'd gotten side-tracked, though, cornered a witch, the backs of three tents forming a sort of dead-end alley between them. She'd had a baby in her arms and a little kid half hiding behind her legs. The men were all jeering and threatening her, laughing over her fear as she pleaded with them in some language Gin didn't know, probably begging them to let her go.

Maybe they wouldn't have done anything but scare her, but as far as Gin was concerned that was bad enough. She had acted without thinking, snapping off a _sabreace_ at the one closest to her. It had caught him in the shoulder, all three of them whirling around, casting shields, worried they were under attack — at least until they realised it was just her, just a thirteen-year-old girl in faded pink shorts and one of the twins' old muggle tee shirts.

_This was a terrible idea, and I'm going to die_.

፠

"_Ron! Ginny! Wake up!" Bill's voice cut through dreams of flying with the Irish chasers, sounding worried, almost scared. "Ron!"_

"_Bill? What's..." She trailed off as the screaming registered, coming closer, as explosions shook the ground. For a flash she was somewhere and somewhen else — back at the orphanage in London, it was the summer of 1940, the earliest days of the Blitz, just days before she was meant to go back to Hogwarts. _Before _Tom _was meant to go back to Hogwarts_, she corrected herself. She was Gin Weasley and it was 1994 and she was at the Quidditch World Cup Final, which meant those explosions — there was another one — _couldn't _be German bombs. Maybe some kind of blasting curse? But... _

_What the hell was going on?_

"_The Irish camp is burning and there's a mob headed our way, we need to move, come on!"_

_Ron was just as sleepy as she was — though at least a little less confused, since she was probably the only person in the room having flashbacks to events four decades before she was even born — but Bill practically shoved the two of them out of the tent. People were running in every direction, Dad and the others had formed a sort of huddle just outside. They pulled Ginny and Ron into the circle, eyes darting toward a wave of flashing light, jeering, and roars of laughter making its way across the field, setting tents ablaze in its wake. _

_Someone cast a bright green spell, crackling into the open air above the crowd, illuminating the scene — dozens, maybe _hundreds _of wizards, marching and laughing, hooded and masked, levitating four struggling people above them, perhaps fifty feet up, terrified shrieks mingling with drunken cheering as more and more wizards came out of the dark to swell the ranks of the mob._

"_Was— Was that an Avada?" Percy muttered, casting a fearful glance over the twins' shoulders. _

፠

When the three men had realised that the person who'd attacked them was only a single, skinny thirteen-year-old girl — Ginny was well aware that she was _hardly _an intimidating figure — the one she had hit waved his..._friends_ on.

"I'll take care of the little bitch, go on."

One of them had laughed. The other scoffed. "Gonna take that long, is it? We can wait."

Gin glared at them. She was _not_ going down without a fight. She wouldn't have attacked them if she didn't think she could stop them. Well, okay, she'd kind of thought (to the extent that she'd been thinking at all) that she could distract them long enough for the young mother to escape, and then disappear into the smoke and the crowds. She might not be very intimidating, but she _was_ very _fast_. When the one who meant to _take care of_ her threw a nasty dark cutting curse at her, it was the one who'd scoffed that she flicked it back at. He ducked it, swearing, to the amusement of the others.

"What are you _waiting _for?" She'd shouted at the woman. "_Run_!"

But Scoffer was angry, now. "_Incarcerous!_" The spell wasn't directed at Gin, but rather at the witch and her children. "I have a better idea: Let's show the kid what trying to play hero gets her. Go on, Paulie."

፠

"_I think those are the Robertses," Charlie exclaimed, squinting at the tiny, floating figures. One of them was spinning, now — a child, barely half the size of his parents. Someone flipped his mother upside down, the crowd hooting and jeering as she screeched, trying to cover herself._

"_Here," Bill said, shoving his way into the circle between Gin and Charlie, holding a handful of amulets. "This isn't just a bunch of drunks, it's organised. There's palings up against apparation and portkeys. Put these on." He didn't say _why_, but he didn't have to, really. Whatever they were, they were bound to help them _somehow_._

"_We're going to help the Ministry," Dad shouted over the noise. "Bill, Charlie, Percy, and I," he clarified, as the twins exchanged one of their _looks _and then nodded at him, uncharacteristically serious. "You two get Ron and Ginny into the woods. Stick together, keep your heads down, and I'll come find you when it's over."_

"_No!" Gin heard herself objecting, even as she slipped the amulet — a set of three runes hastily carved into a wooden token and strung on a bit of twine — over her head. "Dad, we can help, we can—"_

"_Now, Ginny," Percy said, in his most patronising, condescending tone. "You can't really think you'd be any help against _fully qualified wizards_. Leave this to the adults."_

_Gin scowled at him. "I'm not useless, you prat! I can help!"_

"_Your brother's right, Ginny. You worry about getting _yourself _to safety! We'll take care of the Robertses."_

"_Yeah, you can protect us," "and Ron!"_

"_Hey! I can take care of myself," Ron snapped. He'd been in a shite mood since they'd run into Harry and Blaise, hours ago — yesterday, now. Dealing with Malfoy at the match hadn't made it any better. She refrained from correcting him because it would only annoy him more, but _Blaise _could probably beat Ron in a fight._

_Dad hadn't really given her a chance to respond, anyway. "Go on, straight into the woods, and don't stop until I come to find you! Come on, boys!"_

"_Let's go, Gin!" one of the twins shouted, reaching across the circle to grab her hand. _

_Bill stopped him. "Give us a second," he said, waving the others off. "We'll catch up." As soon as they were gone (Dad giving him a half-suspicious, half-fond look as he went), he muttered, low and uncharacteristically intense, "I know I can't _stop _you from doing something stupid, but...here." He cut his pointer finger with a silent charm, drew something on her forehead and whispered a spell she couldn't quite hear, though she felt the magic as it activated, light and hot, washing over her. It faded after half a second, but she could still feel a sort of echo of it, a hint of warmth like standing in the summer sun, or sitting at Luna's kitchen table taking tea with Cassie fucking Lovegood._

፠

_Paulie_, the one she'd cut, growled something under his breath, threw another sizzling dark spell at her. She thought she recognised it, one of the waking nightmare curses — Theo liked to use fear spells when they practiced, so they didn't have to stop as often to heal her. They were also 'beam' spells, rather than 'point' spells, so they were harder to reflect with _sesapsa_. She ducked, retaliated with a chain of charms and a few basic curses — _sabreace,_ of course, and the trigger-drop jinx; a numbing charm; a slightly wider-angle beam spell that was _meant_ for gardening, but acted as a sort of scattershot cutting charm; a nerve-tweaking curse; and a bludgeoning charm — dodging his curses all the while.

The second time through, when he shielded against the scattershot slicing charm, she replaced the nerve tweaker with _lumax_. Her bludgeoning charm actually managed to hit him, but it was barely strong enough to knock the wind out of him. He still managed to shield against her next cutting curse, and went back on the offensive, pushing her back.

And then his friends started to get in on the action, tossing piercing hexes and bone breakers at her in tandem when she was in the middle of a chain, forcing her to break off to dodge one and bat the other away.

፠

"_What the hell was that?" she'd asked._

"_Old magic. Better if you don't know. But it might tip the scales." She didn't think she'd ever seen Bill look more serious than he did staring down into her eyes at that moment. "Try not to get yourself killed, Gin."_

_And then he was gone and the twins were on either side of her, dragging her off toward the trees._

_She followed them for a while, picking their way carefully through the brush, trying not to fall on her face, not really paying attention to their speculation about who was behind the riot and what they were trying to accomplish. For one thing, she didn't really care, and for another, she couldn't stop thinking about Bill's spell. Whatever he'd done to her, when he'd drawn a fucking _blood rune _on her forehead. None of the others had noticed, so it had to have vanished when it did...whatever it did._

_It'd be pretty bloody impossible for her not to know _anything _about Runes. Between Bill casually lecturing her on the subject whenever she saw him all through her childhood and Black babbling off about whatever mad enchanting project she was attempting at any given moment, not to mention Tom's memories floating around in her head, she kind of expected the first couple years of Runes to be a piece of cake. And anyone who knew anything about blood runes knew that they were usually associated with ritual magic. _

_Bill saying it was _old _magic, and it was better if she didn't know... She was pretty sure he'd just done some sort of White Arts thing. She _would've _said _Black _Arts, almost everything she'd heard about blood magic — almost everything she _knew _about blood magic, from Tom — was just plain _evil_, but that hadn't been dark magic, not by a long shot. And she wasn't entirely certain how to feel about that. Most ritual magic was dangerous and illegal, even when it was light magic — light healing rituals, even, you had to have a license to do, there were specialists at St. Mungo's, you couldn't just do them yourself. _

_Not to mention she just couldn't imagine what it _did_. _

Something to tip the scales — _what the hell was _that _supposed to mean? Some kind of protection, maybe? He seemed to understand that she wasn't just going to quietly do as she was told, run away and not stop until Dad came to find them. She didn't have a _plan_, really, aside from avoiding the rest of them so they couldn't stop her. She knew that Dad and her older brothers had gone to help with the muggles, but that wasn't the only place there was trouble — Bill had said the Irish camp was on fire, she figured that meant over by where they'd run into Finnegan yesterday, she could just head that way, see what she could do to help._

_After a while, she didn't know how long, picking their way through the woods by the light of their wands, the boys started to get further and further ahead of her. She hadn't been talking much, thinking about Bill doing White Arts — where had he even _learned _that sort of shite? Every so often one of them would look back and tell her to hurry and keep up, but they weren't paying _that _much attention. It wasn't hard at all to just..._nox _her wand and creep off the path they'd taken — it wasn't even a real path, just picking their way through the trees away from their campsite in more or less a straight line, along with everyone else who'd evacuated this way. And once she had, it wasn't hard to lose herself in the crowds and the dark. She heard them yelling her name when they realised she was gone, but she didn't stop._

_She wasn't some helpless little kid who needed to run away and be protected by her big brothers, she thought stubbornly, heading back not quite in the direction they'd come from, but more west, toward the stadium — she thought that was where the Irish camp had been... _

፠

Of course, she couldn't dance forever. One of the piercing hexes Scoffer and the Quiet One had been throwing around eventually hit her in the arm, threw her off long enough she couldn't dodge some kind of explosive curse. She cast a _protego_ at the last possible moment, but it still blew her backward into a tent, which collapsed around her. She cast the shield charm again as soon as she managed to shake off the stunning effect of having the wind knocked out of her and getting stabbed in the neck and left knee by cracked tent poles — just in time, as the man tried to force the canvas to engulf her. The _protego_ held it off, letting her clamber free.

She was bleeding. She couldn't tell how badly, but she could feel it running down her shoulder and chest, hot and wet, even as she cast the shield charm again, fending off a volley of curses from all three of the men, fighting to keep herself upright and the shield stable, not to mention pay enough attention to the incoming spells to identify the ones _protego _wouldn't stop and dodge or _sesapsa_ them. But she was getting tired, and slow, she could _feel _herself getting slow, it was just— She couldn't _stop_, she had to keep going...

_This was a terrible idea_, she thought again, trying to pivot out of the way of another nightmare curse. Her knee, the one that had been stabbed by a tent pole, gave out, sending her falling to the ground. She cast the _protego_ again, attempting to climb back to her feet, but she'd messed up her ankle too, falling, almost dropped the bloody shield when she tried to put any weight on it at all.

The men advanced slowly, menacingly, only throwing spells she could catch — _playing_ with her, trying to make her shield get too unbalanced to maintain, which didn't take long. Yes, she could keep it steady better than she had when she'd first started training with Theo, but after half a dozen curses or so, especially when they were _real _curses, not just stunning charms and frozen ink pellets...

Then they were standing over her, vicious grins on their faces, plucking away at her shield — hardly even trying anymore, drawing the moment out like the sadistic bastards they were — and she could feel the interference growing, she had seconds left, and she wouldn't be able to get away or cast a new one quickly enough, she would be finished, and they would... She didn't know _what_ they would do, but it wouldn't be anything _good_...

Even as her shield shattered under a dark curse of some kind, magical backlash stinging her wand arm all the way up to her elbow, there was a blinding flash of light and a thundering _snap_, and one of the masked rioters was slammed to the ground, a tall woman suddenly crouching on his chest, Gin had long enough to make out short blonde hair before—

"_Lovegood!"_ It was one of the men who'd shouted it, his slightly muffled voice a mix of anger and fear. The green flash of a killing curse lanced out toward her, and _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ dove out of the way, firing off another spell at the man she'd knocked over. (The ground around him shifted, vines sprouting out of the trampled dirt, wrapping around him and fixing him down.) She was spinning up to her feet, and one of the men had cast another one of those nightmare curses, and Cassie's wand came down in a blink, slamming into the spell just as it came within arm's reach, and it _exploded_, a flash of brilliant silvery light, and by the time Gin's eyes cleared the man who'd cast it had already been blown off his feet, another batch of vines surfacing to bind him in place.

Then there was only one masked arsehole left, but he didn't stay alone for long. They'd been left mostly alone for a few minutes now, Gin and the mother and her kids and the three rioters in their little valley burned between the tents, but apparently the shout of _Lovegood_ had drawn attention. Which wasn't surprising, when she thought about it — _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ was famous for fighting dark wizards all around the world, successfully taking her down would be serious bragging rights with these types. (That, and she was probably the most dangerous person around at the moment.) More masked rioters were rushing in their direction, two, five, Gin had lost count, they were surrounded.

If Cassie was worried about that, she certainly didn't show it. She stunned the last of the original three with an almost casual flourish, even as she twisted out of the way of a Cruciatus coming in at her back. Then the curses were falling in, thick and heavy, the rioters moving to surround her, but none of them landed, Cassie deflecting them away, dodging in graceful twists and dips, almost seeming to dance...

There were more flashes of green, three killing curses fired almost at once from different directions, but then there was another burst of white light and a crash of thunder, a shuddering rumble of a shockwave crossing the air, but _ridiculously_ powerful, three masked idiots flung off their feet and into the air, Cassie had somehow teleported behind them _through_ the anti-apparation wards. (Was that fucking _lightning_? Could _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ travel _through lightning_?) She hit one of the rioters in mid-flight with something that had him suddenly slamming against the ground hard — that one was probably out for the count — curses were falling in at Cassie again, she cast a stunning charm with an odd little flourish in front of it that Gin didn't recognise, only put together what it was a second later, one of the flying rioters abruptly reversing direction the instant before the stunning charm hit, Cassie's dive out of the way of the spellfire starting with an unnatural jerk — a summoning charm, she'd pulled herself out with a summoning charm — she popped out of her roll even as the rioter she'd summoned tumbled to the ground at her feet, a lazy flourish of her wand and vines were surrounding him too, an instant later a curse so light the air _burned_ striking another rioter, he screamed for a split second before crumpling limp to the ground—

(Okay, that trick right there was just _fucking awesome_.)

More curses were flying, but Cassie danced out of the way of all of them, broken by flashes of silvery light, her own spells bringing down the rioters one by one. Seemingly desperate, one cast fucking _fiendfire_ — that had to be what that was, flames orange and black, dark magic shivering across the air, a shifting dragon reaching out and—

And Cassie was standing right in front of it, and she was _singing_ — loudly enough Gin could hear it from here, though she couldn't pick out the words (or even tell what language it was in) — and she grabbed the fiendfire with _her bare hand_, gripping the burning dragon's head, and her hand was _glowing_, her _face_ was glowing, and suddenly it was raining...at least, it _smelled_ like it was raining — suddenly, out of nowhere, green and loamy life overpowering the reek of ash and blood — and the fiendfire was _gone_, dissipating into whisps and smoke, like it'd never been there at all.

Apparently, Cassie felt the wizard who'd cast it was too dangerous to live: a jab of her wand at point-blank, and his chest _burst_, blood and bone and guts splattering across the grass.

There were only a few more left at this point, Cassie nailed one with another light curse of some kind within a handful of seconds, and he was down, and one of them was throwing off blasting curses like they were candy — indiscriminately all over the place, seemingly hoping at least _one_ would do something useful. Gin jumped — one of them was coming _right at her!_ — she tried to move, but she could hardly get to her knees, she couldn't—

She lost her balance, flopping over onto her side again, when the ground under her _shifted_, like a rug yanked out from under her. The blasting curse landed with a deafening explosion of noise and fire, _so_ close, but it hadn't hit her, she was fine. By the time she looked back up again, the witch who'd cast it was _on fire_ — the flames were white and yellow and red, so hot she could feel it from here, the air tingling with light magic so thick she could taste it — and the woman was _screaming_, a high, piercing wail that shivered down Gin's spine.

(Not that she actually felt bad about the pain the woman was obviously in — the bitch _had_ nearly just killed her, after all.)

Cassie downed another rioter before firing off another spell at the burning witch. It hit like an overpowered banishing charm, slamming her against the ground and dragging her across it, in a second all that was left was a smear of body parts and moodily flickering flame spread across five metres or so.

And then there was only one.

At some point, he'd gone back to the mother and the kids, taking them hostage, putting their bodies between him and Cassie. He had the mother by the throat, trying to bring his wand around to point at the baby but he couldn't quite manage it, the mother screaming and trying to twist away. The boy, Gin noticed, was kicking the masked idiot in the shins, yelling at him in some foreign language — Gin wished she could understand that, she had the feeling it was probably pretty funny.

For a brief moment, Cassie paused. Now that she was standing still for once, Gin could see she was wearing distinctly muggle-ish jeans and a blouse that had probably been white at some point, but was now covered with ash and blood. (Streaks and splatters, Gin was certain it wasn't hers.) Gin had a side-view on her, so she could make out her face.

Staring at the rioter, holding the mother and her children hostage, Cassie had gone cold. She usually looked a lot like Xeno, with the same bright smile and bouncing cheerfulness, if somewhat more focused than her spacey older brother, more calm. But now... Gin hadn't even known until just now that the soft, gentle Lovegood features _could_ be absolutely terrifying, but despite the light magic hot and soothing in the air around her she'd gone still and hard and _cold_, it was just scary.

For an absurd moment, Gin was reminded of Tom, or Lyra — which was insane, there was nobody _less_ like those dark sociopaths...

Slowly, glaring at the masked rioter the whole time, Cassie turned her wand on her own arm, cutting a shallow line into her skin. She passed her wand to her off hand, rubbed her fingers over the cut, covering them with her own blood. The man was yelling something at her, something about not moving or the death of his hostages would be on her hands, but Cassie obviously wasn't listening. Her three middle fingers glistening in the firelight, she brought them up to her lips, and she blew on them, and... Well, she was obviously doing _something_, though Gin couldn't begin to guess what it was — rainbow sparks shimmered over the blood on her fingers, like oil in sunlight, swirling and shifting. It grew thicker over the next couple seconds until it hardly looked like blood at all anymore, a twisting kaleidoscope of purples and oranges and reds and blues. Then she stopped and, in a casual, easy motion, swiped her fingers across the air.

It looked like an overpowered cutting curse — three bands of rainbow light slicing across the air, crossing the space between them in a blink. The mother yelled, but whatever curse it was went right through her, seemingly ignoring her entirely. The rioter holding her, though, wasn't nearly so lucky. Whatever it was, it wasn't a cutting curse, instead he...

Well, he just seemed to _fall apart_. He crumbled like dry cake, the fingers gripping the woman's shoulders just _breaking_ off, his robes falling limp to the ground. When it was done there wasn't any blood, or anything that looked like the human body at all, just rumpled robes twisted up in a pile of white, snowy ash.

Gin had absolutely _no_ idea what the fuck that was. But she didn't really need to to know that making Cassie Lovegood angry was a bad, _bad_ idea.

(Morgen's tits, she was _so fucking cool_.)

Now that the fighting was over, Cassie checked with the foreign woman to make sure she was okay first. Gin, in pain and barely able to move from curses and blood loss, _tried_ to not take this personally — _everyone_ knew how Cassie Lovegood could get about kids, and there _were_ two of them over there. After a bit of chattering, the woman breathlessly rambling off with what Gin assumed was gratitude, all of them came shuffling over to Gin. Cassie said something to the woman in her own language (slightly awkwardly, she clearly wasn't fluent), and then they were both standing over Gin and casting spells.

Healing spells of some kind, obviously, though Gin couldn't say what they were. There were a bloody lot of them. Light magic washed over her in waves of soothing warmth, cuts stinging as they knit themselves back together, groans wrenched out of her throat as bones were twisted back into place before mending. (She'd obviously gotten hit with at least two bone-breakers, though she'd hardly noticed at the time.) Most of the magic seemed to be focused on her neck and her knee and her ankle, so thick it burned, her eyes watering.

It lasted a minute or two, and by the end Gin could..._sort of_ move. She wasn't completely healed by any means, of course, but she did manage to sit up the rest of the way, her back throbbing and her head spinning. As she tried to get her bearings, rapidly blinking, she saw the little boy reach into a pocket of his mother's odd foreign robes, pull out...a sheet of paper. With an almost painfully bright grin, he turned to Cassie, chirped something in whatever language that was.

Cassie laughed, shaking her head. Crouching down next to him and muttering something that sounded almost but not quite like chastisement, Cassie took the piece of paper, pulled a pen out of nowhere...wrote something short on it, and...

Had... Had Cassie Lovegood just given a little kid her autograph _in the middle of a riot?_ Okay...

Cassie gave the kid's hair a fond ruffle, before finally turning to Gin. "Fancy seeing you here, Miss Weasley." This first bit was said in an overly formal-sounding voice, clashing with the shouting and the explosions and the fire all around them, the soot on her face and the blood on her clothes. "Your heart's in the right place, I'm not gonna say I don't understand, but maybe you're a little out of your depth here."

"Yeah, uh, I guess so." She'd thought she could handle herself, she wasn't a helpless little kid anymore, but she hadn't realised how... She'd nearly _died_...

"Probably should get to safety, even with someone watching out for you." Cassie's eyes trailed up a little, staring at Gin's forehead, frowning a little. "Anyway, I have work to do yet. Mind keeping an eye on these three and getting yourselves out for me?"

Gin blinked. "Er, sure, I can do that." It looked and sounded like the fighting had mostly moved on from here by now anyway, closer to the Irish camp. Chances were Gin wouldn't get pinned by multiple Death Eaters again.

A smirk twitching at her lips, Cassie gave Gin a little sarcastic salute. "Good luck out there, Comrade." Then, in an intense burst of light magic and a flare of red and white flames, Cassie was just _gone_.

Was that... Was that _phoenix fire_? Was it even _possible_ for humans to do that?

For a few seconds, Gin couldn't move, just blankly staring at the spot _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ had been. She'd known Luna's estranged aunt was a seriously powerful sorceress, but _damn_, that whole thing had just been _so fucking awesome_, Gin didn't even have words.

On the one hand, Gin kind of wished Cassie could come with them — even with the healing spells they'd cast on her, her knee and ankle still hurt. Her back felt like a mass of bruises from landing on whatever had been _in_ that tent, and she was pretty sure she needed a Blood Replenishing Potion. But she could stand, and it was kind of...well, kind of _great_, actually, that Cassie fucking Lovegood thought she could take care of herself well enough to help this witch and her kids get the fuck out of there, even though she'd just had to save Gin's arse from... She didn't know _what _Paulie and company would've done when they finally broke her shield, but it wouldn't have been good.

"Come on," she said, pulling the witch away from the fire and the noise of the mob by her elbow.

She seemed to understand what Gin meant, but instead of following her immediately, she shoved the baby into her arms. Gin was so surprised she nearly dropped...him? her? She'd never really _held_ a baby before, so she just froze, watching the mother pull the little boy up onto her back. Then she took the baby back, and nodded at Gin, nudging her forward with a hand on her shoulder, kind of taking the lead — which was _stupid_, Gin was the one who had a hand free to use her wand, and the mother couldn't know where they were going any more than Gin did, but whatever.

Pretty much everyone over here seemed to be gone, either evacuated or joined in the fighting. Gin wasn't even entirely sure where they _were_, though if the witch and her family had been camping here it probably wasn't one of the British enclaves — she was pretty sure the organisers had tried to group people together by nationality, at least a little bit. When she'd been wandering around with the twins, before they'd run into Harry and Zabini and the Blacks, they'd seen a few areas where no one was speaking English at all. (Or even French — it was supposed to be the big international language, how far away did mages even have to be from to not speak French?) And all the little wooded spots around and between the fields looked the same. They just headed away from the fires they could see, figuring they'd run into other people eventually. Or at least, Gin assumed that was also what the witch was thinking.

It didn't actually take that long before they ran into a bunch of mages she must have been related to. They'd been moving through the abandoned tents calling for _Aleka_, and the witch had gotten all excited when she heard them, started yelling back, and when they'd finally come face to face with the other group, she'd thrown herself into their arms, crying. If Gin had to guess (and she did, she couldn't understand a bloody thing), she was telling the man she was hugging — her husband? brother? — what had happened. She kept gesturing at Gin, and clearly objecting every time she tried to leave — she wasn't entirely sure where she was going, but she had to at least try to find her own family, she couldn't just stay with these random foreigners.

Unfortunately none of them seemed to speak English — one tried French, but she barely knew any, not enough to really speak it — so she couldn't _explain _that, and they came over all worried when she tried to just walk away. The witch — Aleka, apparently — kept putting an arm around her shoulders, guiding her back toward the group, clearly meaning that Gin should stay with them, but, "No, you don't understand, I have to go! I have to find my own family! No, Aleka, please, just... My people are out _there_!" She pointed into the darkness, toward the nearest stand of trees. "I have to go find them!"

"Red? Is that you?" A familiar voice called out from the dark, four bright sparks of wand light coming closer.

"_Zabini_? What the hell?"

Eventually they came close enough to confirm that everyone was who they thought they were — not only Blaise, but also his mother and Harry and Black.

"Ginny?" Harry said. "Hi! How— Where is everyone else?"

"Yeah, how did you fall in with a bunch of Greeks?" Black asked. Gin guessed she didn't really care about the answer, because she went on without waiting for one, saying something to Aleka and her family in what was presumably Greek — _actual _Greek, not whatever language dementors spoke.

"Oh, dear," Lady Zabini said, looking her over. "You're looking a bit worse for wear, Miss Weasley."

"I'm fine," she lied, probably unconvincingly, as she felt like she was about to collapse from exhaustion where she stood.

"Don't be stubborn, Red," Blasie advised her. "Let Mira heal you."

Oh, was that where she'd been going with that? Well, Gin wasn't about to _stop_ her. More healing spells sounded _great_. "Er, I guess, if it's not too much trouble..."

"Of course it's not," Lady Zabini said, casting a few spells at her.

"Yeah, you're not nearly as messed up as Lyra was earlier," Harry said, rolling his eyes at the girl, who was happily chattering away with Aleka and her family as though they weren't standing in the middle of a bloody _war zone_. (Which, he hadn't seen _her_ earlier, but whatever.) "Apparently Narcissa Malfoy cursed her so that anything bad that happens to Draco actually happens to Lyra instead, and he keeps falling over shite like a clumsy idiot and getting hit with stray curses," he explained, over Lady Zabini's casting.

Gin found absolutely none of that surprising — Narcissa Malfoy was a ruthless bitch, of _course_ she would screw Lyra over to protect her son, and Draco _was_ a clumsy idiot, she wasn't the least bit surprised he would've managed to get himself hurt just running away from the fighting like a coward. She was far too distracted by the healing to say any of that, though.

The first few spells didn't seem to do anything, probably just analysis charms, but the next couple eased the aches and pains of bruises and a lingering headache she hadn't even really noticed until it disappeared. They were followed by one that reinforced the strained muscles in her ankle and knee, wrapping them in stiff (but not entirely immovable) bandages. She didn't know what the last one was, but it made her suddenly _far_ less tired, as though she'd just woken up from a good night's sleep, or chased half a vial of Pepper Up with three cups of coffee.

Blaise grinned. "Unfortunately that one doesn't last very long, but it should be enough to get you back to the Black tent, at least."

"Speaking of which," Lady Zabini muttered. "_Lyra_! Tell your new friends goodbye, we're ready to go!"

"Yeah, yeah, I'm coming," she called back, before saying something else to the Greeks, who smiled and nodded and turned to leave.

"Care to fill the rest of us in?" Harry asked.

"Why don't you just use legilimency to eavesdrop? You _know_ I hate repeating shite. They're heading south until they find the edge of the anti-disapparation paling. Many thanks to Gin for saving their Aleka and little Deion and Cora, blah, blah, blah. I told them we'd help you find your family, but honestly, you'll be better off waiting at the Black tent until morning, even if the Powers _are _looking out for you tonight." That last bit was said in a very leading sort of way, as though she'd already decided that was what Gin was going to do, she just didn't want Gin to object, and so was phrasing it as a reasonable suggestion. Which it _was_, but.

Lady Zabini gave her a smirk that somehow managed to seem rather exasperated. "No, Lyra, no one expects you to go track down the Weasleys to return their wayward daughter, no matter how concerned they might be about her safety. We're all aware that such courtesies are too much to expect from you when there's a bloody riot going on."

"Good, because I wasn't going to. Even if I was willing to waste the whole night escorting fucking Weasleys around, it makes much more sense to keep her and have her help Cissy guard the tent." Gin couldn't decide whether she should be annoyed by Lyra's obvious dismissal of her family's concern, or pleased that she thought she could still do anything, as beat up as she was. "Wait, was that sarcasm? _Zee_!" Lady Zabini ignored her, as did the boys — Gin got the impression they hadn't even been paying attention, muttering to each other over there. All three of them headed off, presumably toward the Blacks' site. Black shrugged. "I guess I could go tell William you're not dead if it's really _important_..." she offered, trailing off. There was a note of doubt in her voice, as though she wasn't certain it was, or whether the offer was one she was obligated to make.

Which, while it probably _was_ — though Ron and the twins were probably more worried about her than Dad and their older brothers — that mention of Bill reminded her of the whole _even if the Powers are looking out for you_ thing a minute ago. "What the hell did you mean by that?"

"Well, I may be wrong, but I don't think your father would take it well if I just stepped out of his shadow, so—"

"No, not _that_." She _had_ seen Lyra and Bill talking during the match, and Lyra _had_ asked Bill to back her up when Dumbledore and the Blacks (and Lady Malfoy, and Lady Zabini, and Mr Crouch) had been arguing about Harry in the corner, so they'd obviously been talking about wards. Knowing _that_, Lyra probably considered Bill to be her sort of person, both of them being mad cursebreakers with no respect for the law, and all. It made sense she'd rather track him down than Dad. "You said earlier that the Powers were protecting me, or something."

Black grinned. "Someone marked you," she said, poking at the spot on her forehead where Bill had drawn that rune — Gin had completely forgotten about it in the fight with those men, and then Cassie showing up, and dealing with Aleka and her family. She pulled her finger back _very _quickly, shaking it as though she'd been burned. "Like a blessing sort of thing, asking anyone who sees you out here to keep you safe. Well, anyone inclined to protect stupid children from getting themselves killed doing stupid shite. Aspects of Youth and Life, mostly. Not a terrible idea — Artemis and Brigit both have people here, not to mention all the foreign ritualists around." She shrugged.

Was that... Had _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ only shown up at the exact proper moment to save her stupid arse because Bill had _marked her_, or whatever? She didn't...

Huh. She had no idea how to feel about that.

Also, what the fuck did Black mean, Artemis and Brigit _have people here?_ There were _white mages_ at the campsite? _Who?!_

Black, being Black, didn't seem to realise she'd said something completely insane. "Come on, we're burning moonlight and I have places to be."

፠

It wasn't that much further to the Blacks' tent — a positively medieval looking thing, round with a peaked, umbrella sort of roof, it was far simpler than the castle-like monstrosities of the other Noble Houses Gin had spotted earlier, and tents with gardens and shite attached. It might even have been able to pass for muggle — eccentric, certainly, but not obviously _magical_ — except for the colour. It was blacker than it seemed possible for anything to _be_, darker than the smoke-filled sky behind it, even with fires burning here and there to illuminate the scene. It _had_ to be charmed, probably just to be intimidating, because she was pretty sure there was no mundane way to get canvas to look like that.

Anyone who was actively rioting, trying to burn tents and whatnot, had long since passed, leaving smouldering wreckage in their wake. The Black tent was, in fact, the only one left standing in the immediate vicinity. There were great furrows dug into the ground around it, and Gin saw at least two unconscious wizards lying on the ground — if she had to guess, she'd say they'd taken exception to the tent resisting their efforts to trample and burn it, had a serious go, and been taken out by the wards on it. Granted, it would be _weird_ to put offensive wards on a bloody _tent_, but she didn't really doubt that Black _would_.

"Cissy!" the mad witch called, looking at an empty space off to one side of it. "Why are you out here?"

Narcissa Malfoy shimmered into sight, somehow managing to look just as gorgeous as usual — no matter how _evil_ she might be, even Mum would admit that Narcissa Malfoy was probably the most stylish mage in the Wizengamot — if in a very different way than she usually did. She actually looked _disheveled,_ probably for the first time in her life. Gin didn't think she'd ever seen the blonde witch with a hair out of place, _or_ wearing anything other than formal robes that probably cost more than the Burrow (not counting earlier in the top box, where she'd been wearing what Gin assumed was the muggle equivalent). Her glamour charms were always flawless — Gin's old roommates had had an hours-long debate, once, about whether she even _used_ them, because they were so good no one could tell — and she looked at everyone around her as though they were ants beneath her feet. Kind of like Daphne Greengrass, but _colder _and _meaner_.

But now her hair was plaited over one shoulder, wisps escaping around her face and she was _smiling_ (which made her look about a decade younger), wearing the same sort of dueling robes that Lyra wore around school on the weekends (but green and silver, like the uniforms Slytherin wore in the photos in the trophy room from back when they had inter-house dueling competitions). She was as poised and confident as ever, but more...present in the moment, rather than all cold and distant. She was actually _sweaty _and there was ash on her face and Gin could now definitively say she _did_ use glamour charms, because without them her eyebrows were invisible, making her look kind of like Luna...if Luna were a fucking Black. Normally she couldn't see the family resemblance at all — _Gin_ looked more like a Black, honestly — but right now it was obvious, everything from the smirk on Lady Malfoy's face to the set of her shoulders echoing those of her niece.

("Why is she here at all?" Gin heard Harry ask Lady Zabini, quietly enough that Black and Lady Malfoy probably didn't. "Didn't she just curse Lyra?")

(Lady Zabini chuckled. "She's here because she's Family.")

"Lyra. It's easier to guard the site from out here. Having fun?"

"Not as much as you," she said, eyeing a third downed attacker _very_ pointedly. Gin hadn't seen him at first, he was lying in one of the craters and appeared to have been _crucified to the ground_, his hands and feet pinned in place by heavy wooden spikes, which couldn't _possibly _have been necessary — he'd also been hit in the face with something hard enough to break his nose and give him two black eyes, which _had_ to have been enough to knock him out, or she could have just _stunned _him or something.

Lady Malfoy just shrugged, sneering down at the man, who wasn't dressed as a Death Eater — Gin didn't recognise him, but presumably he had a grudge against the Blacks. She imagined quite a lot of people did. Bellatrix had killed a _lot_ of people during the war, and tortured more. "He kept throwing wide-angle blasting curses at me. It was annoying."

"Uh-_huh_. Speaking of annoying, where is that helpless little twat you call a son?" Black stalked off toward the entrance to the tent before Lady Malfoy could answer, leaving the blonde to hurry after her, hissing something angrily under her breath. Black's response was a mocking _ha!_ as the rest of them followed more slowly.

By the time Gin entered the tent, Malfoy (barefoot, in muddy pyjamas) had been knocked to the ground, his hand pressed to a reddening cheek. Lady Malfoy was objecting to this, shouting something at Black about how she couldn't just go around hitting her son.

Gin, however, wasn't paying much attention to their argument — that last spell Lady Zabini had used on her was wearing off, and she was suddenly exhausted, too tired to really think about anything other than finding somewhere to sit.

There was a fire burning in the middle of the tent (which was...really weird, just a big open field surrounded by black walls, glittering on this side with runes like stars in the night sky) — a real, wood-burning fire (which was _also_ weird, because where was the smoke going?) — with a handful of simple, foreign-looking beds — more like cots, really, just wooden frames slotted together, with some sort of cord woven across them to create a loose, hammock-like sleeping place — covered with fur rugs and canvas bedrolls. A couple of similarly..._rustic_ tables and a box covered in ice — an improvised cold-box, apparently — sat off to one side. One of them had a collection of dishes and cooking supplies on it. The other held a pile of valises and knapsacks (half of which looked like something that Great Aunt Muriel would own, positively _ancient_), with jackets and outer robes strewn across the pile.

She couldn't even imagine what was in the collection of trunks and crates that had been stacked and hung with sheets of canvas like a childrens' fort on the other side of the tent, but there was an enormous cauldron suspended over it on some sort of metal frame, so she was guessing the 'fort' itself was some sort of shower stall. There was a mirror propped up on one of the trunks that jutted out of the pile just a little more than the rest on the outside, and a basin beside it for hand-washing, so there was probably a vanishing toilet over there somewhere, too. (Lady Zabini had shepherded Malfoy in that direction to get him cleaned up and check him for lingering curses, but mostly, Gin suspected, just to get him away from Black.)

All in all, it was just...overwhelmingly _strange_, and not at _all_ what she'd expected — maybe a fancier version of the tent Dad had borrowed, or even just a Portal going back to one of the other Black properties. (It wasn't like Black couldn't _do _that, if she wanted to.) Certainly not...whatever this was. And most importantly, there were no chairs anywhere. The beds all obviously belonged to someone, so... Fuck it, the ground would do.

_Ahh, _so _much better..._

Black reclaimed Gin's attention as she cut Lady Malfoy off with a loud scoff. "The _hell_ I can't, Cissy! That incompetent little prick managed to turn _both_ of his ankles, break an arm, _and _get hit by a fucking Blood-Boiling Curse within the twenty fucking minutes it took you to get here! He's worse than Lucy!"

"And yet here you are, whole and hale, and presumably itching to go play with everyone else over in the Irish camp."

"That is _not_ the point, Cissy!" Exactly what the point _was_ was interrupted by the runes on the wall suddenly growing brighter, a wave of light spreading from a spot near the door. Instead of elaborating, Black stomped over to the tent flap and stuck her head out. "Do you _mind_? We're in the middle of—" The runes flared again, presumably someone throwing a spell at Black. "Oh, _fuck_ you!" She stepped out of the tent, but only for a moment before she returned, cleaning blood from a positively _wicked_-looking dueling knife.

"Feel better?" Malfoy said, giving her a smug smirk.

Gin hadn't _really _believed the rumors that Black was Bellatrix's daughter (by Sirius _or_ Tom) but, according to Ron, Dumbledore had basically told Mum that she was a bioalchemy twin of the notorious madwoman (and also out to get him), which..._really _seemed like it should have been obvious, now that she knew. Not the _being out to get Dumbledore_ part, Gin was pretty sure that was mostly Xeno, but it wasn't like it was exactly difficult to imagine someone like Black (absurdly powerful, incidentally terrifying mad genius) growing up to be someone like Lestrange (absurdly powerful, _intentionally _terrifying mad genius) — especially if she was right and Riddle had been compelling Lestrange to become his perfect weapon since she was a kid. (Which was _exactly _the sort of thing Tom would do, if only because a five-year-old version of Lyra Black would presumably have been the single most annoying, hyperactive person he'd ever met. He'd compel her just to make her _shut up_.) At the moment, watching her vanish her knife with shadow magic, it was impossible _not_ to believe it.

"Not particularly — who the fuck thinks it's a good idea to attack the House of Black when they're too drunk to see straight, let alone get off a proper curse? That wasn't even _fun_."

"Ah, well, they're also too drunk to _think_ straight," Blaise quipped.

"Did you— You didn't, um...kill them, or something, did you?" Harry asked, so hesitantly Gin was sure he didn't want to believe she might have, but just couldn't help thinking it anyway.

Black rolled her eyes — obviously she'd done _something_ — but didn't actually answer, which left Gin (and Harry, from the look on his face) uneasily suspecting that she actually _might_ have killed them. Instead, she just said, "Does it matter?" before moving on. "Now that you're all here, Cissy, you continue to guard the tent, Red can back you up." Lady Malfoy gave Gin, still sitting on the ground, a look which said she doubted that very much, but it was hardly important to note. Gin might have been more annoyed about it if she didn't feel like she might fall asleep at any moment. "The wards on this thing are designed to deal with dragonfire and rampaging quintapeds, not spell damage, so I wouldn't let anyone just hammer away at it, but you should be fine as long as they don't use proper siege spells."

"Wait," Harry said, now with an entirely different sort of suspicion on his voice, "_we_ should be fine? Are you— Lyra you _can't_ be serious."

She turned to give him an absent sort of smirk. "No, Sirius is out having fun without me."

"Having— Lyra, you aren't going back out there!"

"Why wouldn't I? In case you hadn't noticed, there's a riot going on."

"Well _yeah_, that's kind of my point. Sane people _avoid_ riots! Taking on one or two drunk idiots and looters at a time is one thing, but there are _hundreds_ of people out there! In case _you _hadn't noticed, you were half _eaten_ four days ago! You _can't _just—"

"Shut up, Harry," Black snapped, cutting him off with a sharp glare and a flick of her wand. "I was barely eaten at all, and I've already said thank you for that, it's been _four days_, move on already. I see absolutely _no_ reason what _sane_ people do should matter to _me_. And yes, I _can_, _just_, and moreover I'm _going _to, because I have been _itching_ to curse someone since Dumbles decided to drop by, and before that run in with the lethifold I was stuck between planes for an entire bloody week, and before _that_ I spent a month and a half on my best fucking behavior because Blaise said it would freak you out if I didn't—" Harry tried to object to that, apparently having forgotten he was silenced, but Gin was pretty sure Blaise was right — the shite Black came out with when she wasn't bothering to censor herself was downright disturbing. And this was coming from someone who shared _Tom Riddle's_ memories. "—and because the Acting Head of the House doesn't have the luxury of acting like a half-mad little hellion with more curiosity than sense _anyway_, and breaking shite I didn't actually want to break, and dealing with _politics_, which I _hate_, and secrets and plotting, which I'm _terrible _at, and I hate being shite at things even more than I hate politics! It's been a _very_ stressful summer! No, strike that, _year_, because the ten months before _that_ I had to keep my nose clean to keep people from asking questions I can't—"

Lady Malfoy stepped in and grabbed her right wrist with one hand to control her wand, slapping her across the face with the other, bringing an abrupt end to Black's near-hysterical rant (this was probably the most emotional Gin had ever seen her) with a single cool, confident statement: "Duty comes first, Lyra."

That had to be some kind of watchword, because Black closed her eyes and took a deep breath, obviously working to master her temper. (The air in the tent seemed to shiver, almost nauseating, Gin was almost surprised when her own breath didn't come out fogged from cold.) She even more obviously didn't quite manage it, because when she opened them again they were glowing an eerie purplish blue. Gin had thought that only happened in fiction (and trashy romances, at that), people getting so angry their magic flared involuntarily and made their eyes glow or their hair blow in a breeze no one else could feel, but apparently not.

"Let _go_ of me, Narcissa Zaniah." Lady Malfoy did, taking a step back as well. If Gin didn't know better, she'd say Lady Malfoy looked like she was scared of Black, which would make a _lot_ of sense, because the inside of the tent had just dropped about ten degrees, dark magic flaring around her in a way that made Gin _itch_ to go for her wand. (She didn't, of course, Black would slaughter her if she tried to curse her, but she couldn't help edging back slightly, even from a few metres away.) "I've _done_ my duty tonight. Do you have any idea how long it's been since I've been able to really cut loose? _Months_, Narcissa. Acromantulae and inferi don't _count_. And now there's a fucking _riot _going on not a mile away from here, and it might actually be a crime against nature to try to stop me from participating, so— Zee, sneaking up on me right now would be a _fantastically_ bad idea!"

Lady Zabini, who had moved to join them right around the time Black started calling Lady Malfoy by both her first _and_ second names, was apparently unconcerned about the furious, obviously unstable Black sensing her approach without turning to look at her. "It can't possibly count as sneaking up on you if you know I'm here," she pointed out.

She took Black by the shoulder and spun her around, away from Lady Malfoy, leaning down until their noses were almost touching, as though she was going to kiss her. Black froze, glowering at her, eyes still glowing, tension in every line of her body, but didn't resist or pull away, which struck Gin as kind of odd. She really didn't expect Black to be okay with being manhandled like that, especially when she'd just gone off on Lady Malfoy for smacking her. "No one's going to try to prevent you blowing off some steam, and the riot's not going to end before you get there. Harry simply needs some assurance that you aren't going to get yourself killed, because he doesn't know you like Narcissa and I do. I suggest you promise to retreat into the Shadows if your life is legitimately in danger, and go find a more appropriate target for your frustration than _your own family_."

Black didn't say anything for a long time — or at least, it seemed like a long time to Gin, exchanging nervous glances with Harry. Even Blaise seemed tense and serious in a way he usually didn't. Black just stood there glaring, Lady Zabini staring back, every inch of her projecting unyielding confidence in a way that might have cowed even _Tom_. After a short eternity, Black seemed to accept Lady Zabini's words (or possibly realised that the longer she kept up this staring contest, the more likely it was that she _would_ miss out on the whole riot). Magic and fury faded slowly from her eyes, the cold, sickening aura of dark magic on the air fading somewhat. "_Fine_." Gin thought she detected just a _touch_ of resentment there, but Black nodded, tipping her head just slightly — any more and she probably would have headbutted Lady Zabini in the nose. "Yes, I can do that." She took another deep breath, and finally pulled away from the older witch, closing her eyes. "I promise I'll retreat into the Shadows if my life is legitimately in danger," she bit out. "Okay?"

Harry seemed too shocked to answer, but Gin didn't really think she was talking to him, anyway.

Lady Zabini made an affirmative little hum. "Yes. Good girl, Bee." Then she leaned in closer yet to murmur something in Black's ear that actually managed to get a small smile from her.

Everyone else — or at least Gin — let out a breath they'd been unconsciously holding as the tension (and the magic) around her loosened dramatically.

"Cadmus Nott and Menelaus Parkinson have indicated that they'd rather die than fall in line," Lady Malfoy said out of nowhere, presumably suggesting them as more appropriate targets for Black's frustration with...what? life in general? than herself.

Maybe she wasn't as shaken as Gin had thought if she was asking her insane niece to fucking _murder_ her political rivals. Or maybe her confidence had just been restored by Lady Zabini apparently getting Black under control. Which was honestly kind of terrifying, even more than Black being so...volatile, in the first place. Was she a mind mage, or something?

"Cissy..." the older witch said, the nickname sounding like a warning on her lips.

But Black just grinned at the woman she'd seemed so close to cursing only two minutes before. "Narcissa, I _distinctly _recall telling you that I wouldn't be doing you any favours after that little stunt you pulled earlier tonight."

"Yes, well, if you happen to run into them and change your mind, the fact remains..."

"Narcissa, drop it. Lyra, go. Have fun. Just keep in mind, if you get yourself detained I'm leaving you in holding for at least three days."

"I always do." Black laughed, and vanished into thin air.

Lady Zabini sighed, the fearless calm she'd shown in facing down the mad Black easing from her bearing, replaced with annoyance, and perhaps a hint of concern. "I would appreciate it if you _didn't _encourage Lyra to act like Bella."

"I would appreciate it if you would cease meddling in the affairs of the House of Black, but that seems rather unlikely, doesn't it?"

"Well, I could just let her put you in hospital the next time you imply she's taking her responsibilities to the House less than seriously, if you prefer. But you can't _possibly _deny that Bella was a bit _liberal_ when it came to _eliminating_ problems. You Blacks, always so eager to employ the most _extreme _option..." She shook her head as though disappointed, clicking her tongue in disapproval.

"This coming from _you_? Besides, she wouldn't have hurt me, Zabini." Lady Malfoy positively _pouted_, sounding far more certain than Gin suspected she'd been at the time, and comprehensively failing to address the point about assassinating her political rivals being an 'extreme option'.

Lady Zabini sighed. "Yes, _principessa_, she would have. She's not Bella, and even if she was, Bella would have punished you for such disrespect as well. Now, I've had Draco put on a pot of tea, and I suspect the worst of the night's attacks are past us here, so—"

"Are we just not going to talk about the fact that Lyra's out there somewhere getting into a fight for no fucking reason?" Harry interrupted. Gin had almost forgotten about him and Blaise, standing quietly off to the side of the drama. Probably using legilimency to talk to each other, if the way Harry was glaring at Blaise and shaking off the arm that had been around his shoulder was any hint. "Or the fact that she just _killed_ a couple of guys for taking pot-shots at her bloody _tent_?"

"She didn't kill anyone," Lady Zabini said, exasperation tinging her words.

"How—"

"There would have been more blood on her if she'd killed them," Lady Malfoy said, jn a way that suggested she was _far_ too familiar with what it looked like after someone knifed a man to death.

Lady Zabini wrinkled her nose in disgust. "If she _had_ killed them, Harry, she wouldn't have stuck around to argue with you about whether she ought to go back out. She simply wouldn't have had the self-control."

"I doubt she would have even come back into the tent," Lady Malfoy noted.

"She probably would have, she really has been trying _very_ hard. But she certainly wouldn't have stood for any further delay to her joining in the fun."

"_Joining in the fun_?! She could still get herself killed, you know! Even if she does just slip away if she gets cornered, that won't stop her getting cursed in the back. And for _what_?"

The other witches exchanged a _look_ before Lady Zabini answered, smirking slightly. "Because for her _not_ to be out on a night like tonight would be a crime against nature?" That _was_ what Black had said, and not _any_ sort of answer (though Gin wasn't entirely certain it wasn't true).

Harry scowled, but before he could respond to the ridiculous non-answer, Lady Malfoy added, "_If you're not about to die, you're not really living_ — that's how Bella used to put it."

He turned his glare on her instead. "That's _insane_."

Gin took it upon herself to make the obvious response, the one she knew Black would have made if she were there. (In her best imitation of Black, of course.) She levered herself to her feet to throw an arm around his shoulders. "Er...yes? And?"

"Oh, shut up, Ginny," Harry snapped, shaking her off and stomping toward the table where Malfoy was trying very hard to look like he hadn't just been staring off into space looking all terrified. _Wow_, apparently her little joke had annoyed him enough he'd rather hang out with _Malfoy_.

(Everyone else laughed, though.)

* * *

"Hey, Siri!" Little Bella said brightly, appearing behind him out of the fucking Dark, shattering his focus and startling him badly enough to disrupt his aim.

"Fuck! Down!" he snapped, pulling her below the impact plane of an incoming cutting curse arc and casting a _protego _around them.

Bella rolled her eyes and cast an _aegis_ to complement it. "What _now_?"

"What do you mean, what now? You were the one who came to find _me_!"

"Well, yeah, but not to _talk_!"

"Well then what the fuck are you doing here? I told you to get everyone else somewhere safe!" He'd _ordered_ her to, actually, as the Lord of the House, and she'd _obviously _wanted to hex him for it, but she'd actually _listened_, and _damn _if it hadn't felt good, forcing her to do as he said for once, instead of ignoring him and doing whatever the hell she liked. At least, she'd _better_ have done as he'd told her, because if she'd left Harry out here in _this_...

"I _did_. We couldn't apparate out, so I got them all back to the tent. Cissy's being a brat — cursed me in the fucking back, and then had the nerve to ask for a favour not even an hour later! — but Draco's there, too, so she has incentive to hold the fort. Most of the fighting's moved on, anyway."

For a brief moment, Sirius almost let himself get distracted by the story behind Cissy cursing Little Bella, because there _had_ to be a story there— But, _no, focus, Sirius!_ Okay, that was probably okay. He'd obviously missed something, wasn't really sure where Narcissa came into this at all, but she probably _was _capable of holding the tent against anyone who was still over there — whichever Eridanus it had originally belonged to hadn't fucked around, designing the wards on that thing. Good. Harry was safe. Reasonably safe. "And why are you here?"

"Figured I'd watch your back, since you refused to go back to the tent. Not that I blame you, really, but a dead Lord Black is a useless Lord Black, so. Where are we, and what's our objective?"

"There is no _we_!" He didn't want or need her _watching his back_, not when they'd never trained together — in a situation like _this_, where any minor mistake, any distraction, could lead to one or both of them getting their fucking heads cut off. "Go back to the tent!"

"Not a chance."

"I'm the _Lord of the fucking House_, Bellatrix! You _just_ said it yourself! Go!"

"Make me," she said, giving him a reckless grin.

Apparently she was only going to listen to him when she wanted to. (He should have known it was too good to be true, her actually doing something _because he said so_.)

Sirius let out a frustrated growl, but he really wasn't surprised that sending her away from a riot wasn't one of those times. Bella _lived_ for this sort of thing — violence and danger and chaos — he knew that. Well, _everyone_ knew that. But he _understood_ it. (He'd been trying to tell himself he wasn't anything like Bella since he was eleven years old, and even then he'd known it was a lie.) He suspected it was a Black thing, that _need_ to fight, to challenge everyone around them and push themselves until they broke, as much as the Madness or their all-or-nothing affections or their general disregard for life and limb.

If he couldn't get rid of her, he'd have to work around her. Just fucking fine. Annoying, but then, when _wasn't_ Little Bella annoying? He would deal.

"Yeah, that's what I thought. So. Where are we, and what's our objective?" As if this was a fucking strategy game, honestly. He was fairly certain none of the scenarios he had played out as a kid with Reg and Cissy and their little topographic models of historical battlefields and enchanted armies had involved anything quite like _this_, but...

Fine, whatever.

"The Irish delegation is _that_ way," he said, pointing. "There's an anti-apparation up as well, so the Aurors are stuck fighting their way in like the rest of us. Hit Wizards, too. But they're moving _en masse_, slow enough to build another front around themselves." Forming a phalanx was a textbook strategy for riot control, but one _much_ more suited to an urban environment — whoever was in charge back there obviously hadn't fought in the War. "Once the Aurors get to the Irish, they'll make a perimeter along with the rest of the defenders and push back, or escort the muggles out." Probably the former — with a mob like this, if they tried to move the muggles within a defensive circle the centre of the mob would just move with them. Well, unless they were keeping a path clear behind them, that would explain why they were so bloody _slow_.

"Not that I'm complaining, but where the fuck are their cursebreakers?"

"Probably helping strike teams locate the anchors and take them out." Though if they were _this_ organised, the anchors probably had their own guards, and ones who knew what they were doing at that, coordinating over mirrors, so they'd be able to compensate for any losses.

Little Bella snorted. "Figures."

"Everyone's pushing toward the Irish. When we get there, we'll help Saoirse hold the line until the Aurors break through. There's loads of civilians on both sides." Including Little Bella. She _was_ really fucking good for fourteen — at least as good Narcissa at that age, better than he had been — and she'd gotten better in the few weeks they'd been sparring together, could probably hold her own against any single idiot out here, but she'd never fought in a proper battle any more than whoever was calling the shots for the Aurors. As far as he knew, she'd never fought multiple opponents at all, not counting that little scuffle they'd had with those muggles. "Can't tell who's with who, just defend yourself and put down anyone masked, or using lethal force or Unforgivables. Preferably non-lethally." And _stay out of my way_. He didn't say it, worrying about where he was as well as everyone trying to kill her might be the difference between her getting out of here alive and not. And annoying as she was, he _liked_ Little Bella, so.

"And...the muggles are the primary objective?"

"_Obviously_." Just to be clear, he added, "Getting Cavan and his party to safety is the primary objective, followed by extricating Saoirse, then supporting the Aurors' efforts to break up the riot. While minimising loss of life." That last part was important, because Sirius kind of doubted that Little Bella would hesitate to loose fiendfire on the camp or something in order to 'win' the game she seemed to think they were playing.

She rolled her eyes, but didn't object. "Any other constraints I should know about?"

"...No Unforgivables." He _would_ say not to use anything illegal, but he kind of doubted anyone would be paying that much attention, and it wasn't like they couldn't afford any fines they got slapped with, so.

"Right." Bella frowned, obviously considering her strategy. "Anyone tell Saoirse the Aurors are on their side? You know, in case they manage to get over there sometime tonight."

Sirius was fairly certain the answer to that was _no_. "How the fuck would they have? They're on the other side of a fucking mob!"

Bella looked out at the mass of people as though she'd forgotten they might be an impediment to anyone who _couldn't_ travel through Shadows. "...Right. I'll take care of that, then come back." She popped up and hurled a crowd-control stunner over the head of the most competent of the mages pinning them down (Who the hell had taught her _that_?), vanished into thin air even as she began to draw fire.

Two seconds later, the purple-red ball of light expanded, taking out the closest half-dozen mages and giving Sirius the opening he needed to go back on the offensive against the rest, ducking and weaving between enemy spells — most non-lethal in a crowd like this, for fear of friendly fire — throwing together impromptu chains of prank spells and simple charms, transfiguring the ground around them to disrupt their footing, conjuring animals to defend himself, animating the very grass beneath their feet to trip them up — _untouchable_ because he could feel them, feel the magic of their incoming spells, the waves they made in the air and the aether between them, timing _perfect_, because how could it not be with Magic Itself singing in his veins?

They'd taken Felix Felicis, once, he and Jamie and Remy (and the _Traitor_), made a single, perfect afternoon for themselves. It had _almost_ been like this, but this was _better_. This was _real_. (And unlike _actual_ Madness, battle-madness faded away when the fighting was over.)

_This _was Sirius being exactly where he was meant to be, where the universe _wanted _him to be, _free_, and pitting himself against an endless horde of foes — more masked now than not, throwing more dangerous spells as he attracted their attention, as he threatened them — every one of them itching to take him out with their cold, deadly magics, every one too slow to stop him, or even delay his advance, making his way toward the glow of the palings Saoirse had erected— Was it just him, or had they gotten brighter in the time since Little Bella had come and gone?

He didn't know how long it had been, it didn't matter. All that mattered was magic and motion and the pounding of his heart and the fierce, undeniable excitement he hadn't felt in almost fourteen years, throwing himself into the fray without the slightest _hint_ of fear or reservation, because it didn't matter if he died in the next seven seconds or eighty years from now, because _right now_ he was _alive_.

Gods and Powers, he'd missed this.

"Black!"

That wasn't Little Bella, she hadn't come back, or if she had, she hadn't cut in, interrupted the dance — either way, that wasn't her voice. A woman, yes, but too far away to be Bella stepping out of his shadow, too serious, because if he couldn't keep himself from grinning, he doubted Bella could keep the laughter out of her voice. Not to mention the magic the mystery witch was casting was _far_ too light to have anything to do with his mad cousin.

"Kinda busy here!" he shouted over his shoulder, batting away a volley of cutting curses and transfigured ice daggers, sending a flock of fire-bird constructs to retaliate.

The mystery woman picked off the witch he was fighting, breaking the flow of the fight, but gaining his attention as she'd no doubt intended. He cast a shield as he spun on his heel, profanity on his lips. "What the _fu—_ _Lovegood_?"

Castalia Lovegood — it _had_ to be Cassie, she looked _just_ the same as she had sneaking off to the Forest with Evans, half a lifetime ago (well, _messier_, but _almost_ exactly the same, anyway) — grinned, the vicious expression half-hidden with ash and blood. "If you were aiming for the Irish, you're going off course!" she shouted, pointing toward the glow of the palings.

He looked around to find the stadium, orient himself. Oh. So he was. One engagement had led to the next, and he'd let himself get drawn around to the east of his original line of attack. The Aurors' advance had almost caught up to him, though only because their phalanx had fallen apart — they might have been flanked — and they were now pushing forward by squad, the four-mage teams cutting through the mob _much_ more effectively, though they did end up leaving enemies behind them instead of clearing a path to extricate the muggles.

Now that he'd slowed down for a second, he noticed he was standing on a flag — it was slashed with char, but Sirius could still make out the purple dragon on a green field of Ars Brittania. He blinked, glancing in the direction of Saoirse's wards. If the Corpse Munchers were teaming up with the _British_ nationalists against the _Gaelic_ nationalists that... That wasn't good. In fact, he thought it might be a _Very Bad Thing_.

But this also wasn't really the time to get distracted with that sort of thing, so he turned back to Lovegood. "Cheers! Have you seen Bella?"

Cassie frowned, making a face as though she wasn't sure she'd heard him right over the screams and the blasts and the general havoc all around. "Lestrange? I don't think she's here."

She wasn't. They'd definitely know if she was, because the sky would be on fire or something, and the entire fucking mob would be running the other way. According to Mirabella and _Little_ Bella, Bellatrix had no intention of returning to Britain anytime soon. All Sirius had had to say on the matter was _good riddance_. (As long as she stayed somewhere she couldn't be extradited to Britain, he didn't need to feel guilty about not telling the Aurors what he knew about the situation, because it wasn't like they'd be able to get their hands on her anyway.)

"Not _Bella_ Bella, the little one! Lyra!" He held a hand up level with his collar bones, though that probably wasn't much help, the original Bella wasn't much taller. He shrugged. "Looks just like the big one, but on our side."

"Haven't seen her! Someone's been throwing around pretty serious dark magic over there, though!" _There_ was practically directly west of them, nearly in step with the Aurors' advance.

Well, hopefully Bella wasn't throwing around anything _too_ dark — he'd _thought_ she was going to stick to the rules he'd laid out, if only because accepting a handicap made winning more difficult and therefore more interesting. Like trying to play out a reconstruction of the Fourteenth Goblin Rebellion without using witchcraft, or winning a formal duel with only illusions (which was still fucking hilarious, he wished he could have seen it). But this _was _Bella they were talking about, there was every chance she'd gotten bored with the game and found some other way to entertain herself. "Could be her!"

"I was just on my way to check it out!"

Well, that sounded like an invitation to Sirius. "Go on, I'll follow you!"

About two minutes later — Cassie had gotten _awesome_, in the _literally awe-inspiring_ sense, since the last time Sirius had seen her fight (he had heard that she was killing Dark Lords as a hobby now, but seeing her in action was something else) — they managed to reach _there_, which _was_ Bella, because of _course_ it was, laughing and dancing between bolts and arcs of spell-light, letting them pass her by harmlessly, only to strike other opportunistic enemies behind her; using her knife to split incoming wide-angle things she _couldn't_ just dodge (that was a semi-freeform thing, probably what Cassie had felt her doing from however far away); and keeping about six masked idiots at bay with a fucking fire whip (which did kind of make him wonder why the _Death Eaters_ were targeting someone who was so very obviously _Bellatrix_, or possibly her child — but then, he supposed, the Death Eaters had all _met_ Bellatrix, so...), presumably because _why the fuck not_.

Seriously, who used a _fire whip_ in _actual combat_? No one! Fucking _no one!_ That was just so _absurdly _impractical... But she was doing pretty well with it, dropping the curse after each _crack_, leaving burning welts behind and letting her snap off point spells — mostly piercing hexes and pain curses laced with enough dark magic he could feel them from here — between lashes, and...

Was it wrong of him to think that was kind of hot?

(Probably yes, he decided. But that didn't mean it wasn't.)

He meant, on the one hand, she was fourteen, and his cousin, and clinically insane, but on the other... He defied anyone to watch her put on a show like _that_, dark and deadly, but not _serious_, just _playing_, almost...innocent, in the lack of malice in it despite the very real danger — yes, he knew the curses she was throwing around were potentially lethal, but her elaborate, impractical strategy could be mistaken for nothing else — dancing on the edge of destruction (any slip-up would mean death, because the Death Eaters who had her surrounded _weren't_ playing), expressing pure, violent _joy_, and tell him it wasn't — _she_ wasn't — just fucking _beautiful_.

(And also hot.)

"Definitely Bellatrix's kid," Cassie noted, sounding slightly disapproving. "Someone should tell her to stop fucking around before she gets herself killed."

"Eh, I think she's got it under control."

As he watched, someone managed to tag her with some kind of bludgeoning curse, knocking her to the ground several feet away, just in time to avoid an Avada lancing through the spot where she'd just been standing, and an impaling curse, spears erupting from the ground in a line chasing her down. She rolled back to her feet without losing momentum, jumped over a cutting curse aimed at the spot where she'd fallen (casting some sort of dispelling shield on the ground to stop the impaling curse) and ducked a Heart Rotting Hex. The man directly behind her took it instead. She let herself get hit with a couple of spells (neither of which had an immediate, visible effect) to avoid an Entrail Expelling Curse, cut through the path of an elemental spell intended to blast her off her feet with a torrent of water, and managed to catch one of the masked wankers around the arm with the whip — apparently unexpectedly, because when he reared back, it pulled her off balance, stumbling forward a few steps.

Rather than simply drop the spell to break the connection, she looked up and _grinned_ at her attacker — whom Sirius was beginning to feel preemptively sorry for — and twisted her wand, flame transforming to lightning, racing toward the wizard, leaving a thunder-clap and a very unconscious, slightly steaming (possibly dead) man in its wake.

Bella let out a triumphant "_Ha_! Suck it, Ciardha!"

Sirius just _stared_, because... What the hell even _was _that? Some kind of elemental lightning thing? And how the fuck had she cast it _while already casting_ another curse which required her constant attention?

Neither of them noticed the man at her seven o'clock cast the Cruciatus at her until it was _far_ too late for her to avoid it. She _shrieked_, though only for a second or two before Cassie nailed the man with an almost painfully bright flash of searingly hot light magic — Sirius had to catch up to her later and ask her to teach that one to him, because the Death Eater _exploded_ into bloody mist and flying chunks of charred bone, just, _fucking hell_ — capturing the attention of everyone within ten yards, half of them running, half throwing themselves at her, the few defenders present freed from combat, pushing forward again, leaving Bella flat on her back, alone in the middle of a sort of lull.

By the time Sirius reached her — a second behind Cassie, but _he_ couldn't fucking teleport (How the _fuck_ had she done that? Was that _phoenix fire_?) — Bella was sitting up, trying to catch her breath between panting giggles. (Being released from the Cruciatus really _was_ a hell of a rush.) Up close, it was clearer that she hadn't managed to avoid _all _the spells cast at her over the course of the night — her hair was matted with blood on one side, and there was a nasty-looking slice in her left shoulder. He wasn't sure she'd noticed. Blood and ash and mud were smeared across her arms and legs, and she'd obviously been caught by a fire spell at some point, because part of her green and gold totally-supporting-Ireland-and-I'm-not-talking-about-quidditch blouse had been scorched and blackened.

"Hey, Siri."

"You okay?"

She probably was — she took his hand when he offered it to pull her to her feet, looked around kind of absently, taking in Cassie's fight against...pretty much _everyone_ with a rather...evaluating expression. Sirius was pretty sure none of them had managed to tag her with anything yet, it was kind of hilarious, about twenty attackers falling over each other, getting absolutely _destroyed_ — even better because Cassie was still doing the _no dark magic_ thing. (He remembered she'd gotten shite about it at Hogwarts, but she'd apparently gone on to prove she didn't need dark magic to be _completely fucking awesome_.) It kind of reminded him of Bella and his Mouldiness taking on Dumbledore and half the Auror Corp at Denbigh Moor. He'd bet the Black Seat that Little Bella was also wondering if there was any possible way to get Cassie to fight the original Bella, just to _see_ it, because _damn_.

"Mmm, yeah. Fine. Well, as long as I get a curse-check in the next three or four hours. But yeah. Did Lovegood already kill the one that crucio'd me?"

"Ah, definitely yes." Honestly, Sirius doubted there was even enough left to identify him from — didn't help that his wand had probably been caught in it too. (Apparently, using Unforgivables on children in front of Cassie Lovegood was a _terrible_ idea, even if the child in question was just Bella. He'd heard Cassie had a thing about kids, but fucking hell...)

Bella glanced around the rest of the field and sighed. "Well, _fuck_. Guess I'll have to settle for ruining everyone _else's _night then." She turned away from Cassie's fight, cast a few analysis charms — a distance measurement of some sort, and one that returned a series of arithmantic formulae which were...something about apparation? He'd never much cared for Arithmancy.

"Er, what? What is all that shite? You _do _realise we're in the middle of a riot right now."

"You _do_ realise I don't actually _like_ being hit with the Cruciatus? Besides, Lovegood stole everyone worth fighting. Just cover me, this won't take that long."

"No, seriously, what are you doing?"

She pouted at him. "Don't you like surprises?"

"Not when you're the one doing the surprising."

"You're no fun."

"Lies and slan— _Fuck_!" Apparently their lull was over, because that was _definitely _an explosive, bone shattering curse, and it had _definitely _been aimed at his _head_.

Bella spared half a second to smirk at him before kneeling — getting out of the line of fire — and casting a sound illusion, which, probably not surprising she could pull that off, even while casting half a dozen more analysis charms, she _had_ spent most of last week using them to talk, after all — he hadn't missed her doing so wandlessly, earlier (the look on the Old Goat's face had been _classic_) — but he was _pretty sure_ he'd never heard anyone use a straight sound illusion to replicate an entire fucking song... He finished off his chain of offensive spells with a long-distance conjuration — a very basic, very _flammable_ gas, and a fireball that expanded to engulf all four of the people who'd decided he looked like an easier target than Cassie. Not that they were _wrong_, they _were_ stupid enough to stand close enough to each other that he could catch them all with a single Hindenberg, but _nobody_ was _that_ stupid. (She was _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ — Sirius was _good_, but he could count on his fingers the people he'd ever seen who were more intimidating in a fight.) "Is this the Doors?"

She nodded. "It's a hint. Now shut up, I'm trying to concentrate."

Uh _huh_. _Concentrate_. While replicating and projecting a song he hadn't heard since he was in school — Five to One? What kind of hint was _that_ supposed to be? — talking to him, and silently running through a series of calculations, projecting notes and diagrams in the air before herself with _another_ illusion. (Bella had apparently _always_ been ridiculous.) He was _pretty sure_ that she could just drop the music if she were _that_ distracted. He _did_ stop talking to her though, at least for a few seconds, had to fend off the two _new_ attackers sneaking up on his left, conjure a steel wall to ground a stray Avada (Cassie had dodged it), but Bella wasn't even looking up, and—

_Oh!_ He got it! "Bella, you'd better not be planning on killing everyone here!"

"No, I'm just not letting anyone _leave_. Unless you interrupt, then I probably will kill everyone here. Don't talk to me, don't touch me, and don't cast anything that directly affects ambient magic. Er...if I pass out, hit me with an _ennervate_ or something." Oh, yes, because casting spells that had a significant probability of _knocking you out_, _in the middle of a fucking battlefield_ was a _great_ idea... "Also, could you _not_ conjure great fucking blocks of iron in the middle of my casting area?! It's _very distracting_!"

"Oh, well excuse me for saving your life, you ungrateful little..."

He vanished the damn wall — it had served its purpose already, anyway. Cassie was moving on, and Aurors were starting to break into the clearing — the field of dead and incapacitated rioters, really — that she'd left behind her, regrouping before pushing through the final fifty yards or so between the lot of them and the palings Saoirse was _still _holding. Which was pretty fucking impressive, really, they _had_ to have been taking a beating throughout the entire bloody fight, Bella _had_ said that Ingham kid knew what he was doing.

Bella closed her eyes and dropped the fucking illusions and started carving runes into the fucking _aether_, because of _course_ someone had thought it was a good idea to teach _fourteen-year-old Bellatrix_ runic casting. The whole situation was really starting to remind him of chasing Evans around a fucking war zone trying to keep her from getting killed long enough for her to keep _everyone else_ from getting killed, which was just unnerving as hell. (He was starting to get why Bella had wanted to recruit her so badly, probably reminded her of herself as a kid.)

But in the interests of _not_ interrupting a spell which... Okay, she probably hadn't been kidding when she'd said this could kill them all if it went wrong — that was a _lot_ of runes, and even if _he_ wasn't casting anything that directly affected ambient magic he wasn't the only other person casting shite in their general vicinity. So in the absence of anyone to defend against, and the interests of not blowing them all halfway back to London because some blibbering humdinger decided to stop _fourteen-year-old Bellatrix_ from doing a _massive_ rune-cast _something_ — or even just to see if she was okay, sitting on the ground in the middle of the carnage Cassie had left behind, with Sirius hovering over her all awkwardly — he started casting a few palings to deflect the attention of anyone who might notice the runes accumulating in the air around her.

Not that it mattered, he didn't get through more than a couple of them before she finished the spell. For a brief moment, the rune-scheme hung there in the air, shimmering with the not-quite-light of magic, more felt than seen. Bella still had her eyes closed, which was even more unnerving than the realisation that she reminded him of Evans, even if he _knew_ she could probably feel the magic more clearly than she could see the actual runes. Cold, dark power was rolling off her, tracing over them with a thousand invisible fingers — checking her work, apparently, as she cast a couple more runes before looking up at Sirius with a downright _cocky_ smirk. "No one here gets out alive."

He wasn't sure if she'd actually made that the activation key, or if she just manually set the thing off, but Sirius could feel the ambient magic twisting around them as it took effect, a double handful of rune-clusters streaking off in every direction, the others winking out in sequence as they did...whatever they were intended to do. He had a sense that there was something _breaking apart_ all around him, just outside his actual ability to see or feel it, the fucking _ground_ shook — _What the hell did you do, Bella?!_ — and then...everything _stopped._

And he did mean _everything_ — even the drunkest of the rioters (not that many this close to the heart of the fighting had made it here while intoxicated) couldn't ignore a fucking _earthquake_. For the space of half a dozen heartbeats, Sirius was sure they could have heard a pin drop. He broke the silence himself, casting a Reviving Charm on Bella, who _had_ passed out — he wasn't sure whether from the mental strain of the working, or overchannelling, or both. If it was overchannelling, the charm probably hurt like a bitch, but she _had_ said to _ennervate_ her (and it couldn't possibly be worse than the Cruciatus, so).

She gave a whole-body twitch, as though he'd kicked her rather than hit her with a standard counter-charm, sat up blinking and pressing her palms to her temples even as everyone else apparently realised that, whatever had just _caused a fucking earthquake_, it wasn't actually doing anything to stop them trying to kill each other...and also that the Aurors had managed to close in on them while they'd been busy trying to kill each other.

"Did it work?"

"_I don't know_, Bella! You never told me what the _fuck_ you were trying to _do_!"

She smirked. "I hijacked the Death Eaters' anti-disapparation palings and tied them into the foundation enchantments on the stadium. Well, kind of. Fucking thing's huge, they had to integrate it into the local ambient magic currents, so I treated it like a geomantic reservoir, teased out a loop to support them as proper wards. I'm gonna say it worked." She pointed over his shoulder, toward Saoirse, where the Aurors were advancing, trapping the rioters against the wards and the furious Gaelic separatists, and the rioters were...panicking.

_Seriously _panicking — whoever was organising this little party must have given the order to drop their palings to retreat and realised they _couldn't_. They were effectively trapped between Síomha Ní Ailbhe and Cassie Lovegood, a position also known as _thoroughly fucked_. About half of them had their hands up in surrender, and half were trying to make a run for it on foot, or do that fumation thing that so annoyingly worked even when apparation _didn't_. Those were probably the leaders, too. For about two seconds Sirius thought they might get away — there wasn't a good spell to stop someone in that particular state, or at least they hadn't had one when _he'd_ been in the Corp. Then Bella did...something, another handful of runes flashing into and out of existence. Whatever it was, every single cloud of smoke — including the haze of _normal_ smoke from burning tents and conjured explosions — slammed into the ground, pinned in place by...

"Did you just bring the ward dome down on top of them? Wait, why would they put up palings against fumation?"

"They _didn't_, moron. I tweaked them. I _said_ no one's _leaving_, and I _meant_ it. Fuckers."

Well...okay, then. "Am I missing something?"

"Probably," she muttered, pushing herself rather unsteadily to her feet.

"Ha bloody ha. Going to tell me what the fuck is going through that mad little head of yours?"

"I'm pretty sure I don't have to justify myself to you."

"Well, I mean, I can just add this little incident to the list of Shite Bellatrix has Done Because Bellatrix is Insane," which included _well_ over half the things she'd ever done, but. "I'm just saying, getting a bunch of British nationalists and Death Eaters arrested instead of letting them go to fight another day seems a little..._nice_, for you."

She blinked up at him, an expression of _complete_ incomprehension. "You're kidding, right?"

"Er...no? This is the kind of thing people get in the Order of Merlin for. You know, if you don't get arrested for breaking the fucking World Cup Stadium."

"I didn't break it...though I might not actually be able to un-do it, so I guess that is debatable. But it's not actually hurting the stadium, they could just leave it. And it's not like they'll use it for anything ever again anyway." She didn't sound quite certain of that. "Er... Zee did tell me not to get detained, so...maybe we should go."

Yeah...that was a point. Even if she wasn't _charged_ with anything, the Aurors would probably want her to come in and explain what the fuck she'd just done, which would take _ages_, especially since they probably had two- or three-hundred captured rioters to process first, at least half of them seriously injured and abandoned or incapacitated over about a quarter square mile, so they'd have to coordinate with St Mungo's, probably... And Sirius didn't particularly fancy sticking around to be questioned either. He shrugged, started leading the way back to their site. "You coming?"

She sighed, casting a longing glance back at the few rioters who were still attempting to resist capture. "Yeah, I guess." Was that— Did Little Bella actually sound _disappointed_?

"Hey, cheer up, kid, we won."

"Well, yeah, but that means it's _over_. And this was _great_, I didn't _want_ it to be over. I mean, I _know_ it couldn't just go on _forever_, but... Is this what sadness feels like, Siri?" she asked, apparently sincerely, dark eyes wide and solemn, frowning up at him behind spatters of mud and blood and streaks of ash — adorable, in a baby thestral kind of way. "Because I have to say, not a fan."

Sirius snorted, because, well, "That was _such_ a Bellatrix thing to say."

* * *

_Okay, it may be a bit of a toss-up, whether I like innocent!Draco or baby_thestral!Lyra better...it's easy to forget that she's also still a kid, no matter how intelligent and well educated and magically powerful she might be. —Leigha_

[Good luck out there, Comrade.] — _For the record, Cassie is familiar enough with muggles to be aware of the leftist use of this word, but this isn't supposed to be a suggestion she's, like, a member of the Communist Party or anything. She's just silly and strange sometimes. —Lysandra_

[There were WHITE MAGES at the campsite? WHO?!]_ — Gin is *so close* to putting it together that Cassie might kinda sorta be one of them... If she weren't so very exhausted at the moment, she'd probably get it._

_(And let's be real, it's going to make Gin's whole summer to have Cassie fucking Lovegood address her as a comrade in arms xD)_

_There is a short list of people who understand Lyra well enough to manage her. Unfortunately for Cissy, she's not on the list..._

[Was it wrong of him to think that was kind of hot?]_ — Sirius, in case you were wondering, this is the reason Black Incest Jokes are a thing._

_And yes, Lyra is legitimately confused about getting the leaders of the riot arrested being a nice thing to have done — an excerpt from the conversation she and Sirius have after the battle:_

_"This isn't the sort of thing where I get into the Order of Merlin, either. This is the sort of thing where I'm informed that I'm a disgrace to Slytherin House and Ciardha refuses to teach me anything for like, two months, because I can't be trusted not to use my powers for evil. Paraphrasing, obviously. Ah...Snape would probably find a way to fob off actually teaching the first-years' lessons on me because I need to learn patience or moderation or something."_

_"Wow, I didn't think Snivels hated his students that much. Also, aren't you supposed to be a Gryffindor?"_

_"Oh, right. I am, yes." Sirius snorted. "Well, kind of. I mean, I probably spend more time in the Slytherin Commons, and Dumbles and Minnie seem to think I should be Snape's problem to deal with. Plus if you ask the Gryffindors, they'll say I'm a disgrace to Gryffindor, too. And given the average level of competence displayed by the vast majority of Hogwarts underclassmen, I'm guessing Snape does hate them that much, but that's not the point. The point is, people don't reward me losing my temper and getting carried away and doing stupid, excessively vengeful shite like this, no matter how neat it is. They just don't. Ever. Even if they don't really mind that I got a bunch of people arrested out of spite, I'll probably get in trouble because runic casting is super dangerous and I just started fucking around with it last November, and even if I didn't kill everyone, I could have. The done thing is generally to discourage me from doing things that even have the potential for a body count."_

_Okay, okay, I'll stop now. —Leigha_


	6. Interlude — After Party

"Do we know what's going to happen next?"

Síomha, reclining lazily in her armchair, let out an irritated huff. "The D.L.E. has barely even started in on their investigation yet. They _might_ come out with actual useful intelligence on the ringleaders and what they were trying to accomplish, but I honestly doubt it — this _is_ the Ministry we're talking about."

Michael couldn't quite hold in a smirk at her tone, covering it with his glass. (It wouldn't do for her to think he was mocking her...too much, anyway.) He'd spoken with Síomha enough by now to learn she had a _very_ low opinion of the British Ministry. Most of Saoirse did, he'd found, and his own impression was much the same. He hadn't had any reason to be charitable to begin with, and what he'd learned over the last few months, the events surrounding the World Cup, all of it had just made him more and more skeptical.

It was the day after the World Cup, the sky out the window just now darkening with true night, not yet twenty-four hours since the riot had started. Once things had calmed down enough for Saoirse to extract them safely, Michael and his people had all been evacuated to a little magical village. Well, not a village exactly, but the Ailbhe...clan compound? Was that what they called it? (He was still a little behind on this magical culture stuff, some of it was so very foreign.) It looked like a village, little wood houses spotted with colourful banners and sprawling vines and bushes, but only Síomha's extended family lived there, mages named Ailbhe by the dozens.

Not that he'd actually seen many — it'd been the middle of the night by then, the narrow dirt streets had been completely empty, the place still and quiet. Síomha had led them to one of the houses, apparently her own — a tiny thing, little more than a kitchen and a library/office and a single bedroom — where she'd squirreled them away for the night. Ciarán and Muirín were left behind to watch over them, while Fionn, Clíodhna, and Síomha herself dealt with the immediate aftermath.

Breandán had been annoyed about being "detained" by their magical allies overnight, but Ciarán had argued they were concerned about follow-up strikes, it was better they stayed somewhere the British nationalists wouldn't be able to find them. (And even if they did, the village was apparently built for a siege, and all the clan's children were scattered about the place, anyone would have to be _completely insane_ to attack them here.) An eminently reasonable concern, Michael thought, given that the rioters had been at least partially focused on their delegation, and their non-magical bodyguards apparently agreed — after a short whispered debate, Breandán and James had both consented to staying the night, demanding the mages conjure up beds so the civilians could get some sleep.

Alex had conked out pretty much instantly, but Michael hadn't managed to get much rest at all. For one thing, he'd been _in Síomha's house_, had been distracted with the urge to snoop around. (Not that he had, not with Muirín sitting there giving him a knowing, amused sort of look whenever his eyes started wandering.) And, well, he had still been a bit...keyed up. He had essentially just come out of a _magical fucking warzone_, it had been...

Terrifying. It had been terrifying. He was all too aware of the fact that, if Síomha and her people weren't _very_ good at what they did, he'd almost certainly be dead right now, murdered by drunk magic Nazis.

It wasn't a _relaxing_ thought, to put it mildly.

But if he was tired, Síomha looked _bloody exhausted_, her face seemed longer and paler than usual. She clearly hadn't gotten a shower yet — which was a bit silly, she could have cleaned up before meeting up with him back at his flat, but fine — her disheveled black hair missing its usual silky sheen, a couple faded smears of ash still crossing her cheeks, her forehead, flecks of blood still visible around the fingernails of her left hand. She hadn't changed either, still in their uniform — torn in a couple places, still spotted with blood and ash, thin streaks of it running down from a slash above her right hip, and her cloak was missing entirely, she hadn't been wearing it when the fight started and hadn't managed to recover it.

Michael remembered that one injury she'd gotten _very_ clearly: Síomha had shoved him out of the way of one of the first curses, mostly dodging it herself but still getting clipped as it passed. (It was a very strange thought, that she'd figuratively taken a bullet for him, he wasn't certain how to feel about that.) The person who'd fired it was in _much_ worse shape than she was. In fact, Michael suspected he was quite dead. Most of the first wave of attackers — they'd had very little warning anything was wrong before curses started flying — had been cut down by Síomha and company, covering Michael's people while Fionn scrambled to put up wards. He hadn't been able to see what was going on very well, shielded as he was by Saoirse and his own bodyguards, but he was all but certain Síomha had killed at least four people in those first twenty seconds. And she'd put them down _hard_.

Not that Michael minded so much, of course — they _had_ been magic Nazis trying to kill him personally. It was just sort of intimidating, the very _violent_ reminder that the exhausted young woman sitting in his home across from him had absurd magical powers, and was _fully_ capable of killing him with a wave of her hand if she wanted to.

(But, well, she _had_ figuratively taken a bullet for him, so.)

"Although they won't be able to just sweep it under the rug this time, at least," Síomha was saying.

Michael shot her a skeptical frown. "Sure about that? I thought the Ministry was practised in that by now."

"Oh, that's what they'd normally do, certainly." Síomha managed a smile, her clear exhaustion — the poor woman had probably been awake since six in the morning yesterday — forcing the expression thin and weak. "But you forget, Michael: this was an _international_ event."

It only took him a second to put together what she was saying. "You mean, foreigners were killed."

"We don't have a full casualty count yet — people are still being treated, and they've hardly started picking through the scene. But, so far, they've confirmed the deaths of eighteen Hollanders, twenty-six Danes, eight Saxons, twelve Frenchmen, and one or two here and there from various other countries. The bulk of the dead and injured are Brits and Gaels, of course, but..."

"...that foreigners were killed means the Ministry can't just do nothing, right."

Síomha nodded. "The I.C.W. has already moved to send observers, both for the investigation itself and the legal proceedings afterward. The Ministry can't pull their usual shite, not while the international community is watching."

Letting out a low hum, Michael took a slow sip from his glass. "I don't suppose that's enough to fuck over the magic Nazis permanently."

Another weak smile flickered at Síomha's lips — she found his use of the term _magic Nazi_ amusing, he'd noticed. "Maybe, maybe not. They were already, er, _partially_ fucked. It wasn't just low-level Death Eaters or supporters, there were people from nobles families with the Allied Dark there too — Lord Nott is among the dead, and Lord Malfoy himself was captured—" Michael grinned, served that bastard right. "—so they would have been in a tight spot even without the I.C.W. looking over the Wizengamot's shoulders. But, I don't know. There were Ars Brittania supporters on the ground, but it looks like they were smart enough to not have anybody actually important running around cursing people like lunatics. And, well, it'd be foolish to assume the Allied Dark is actually down for the count — Narcissa Malfoy wasn't implicated, and I wouldn't put it past that woman to come up with something absurd and completely unexpected to get her people out of trouble. It could go either way, at the moment."

"Mm." Michael wasn't sure what to think about Narcissa Malfoy. She was... Well, terms and concepts weren't _directly_ comparable between their politics, but as he understood it she was essentially the head of the magic Nazi party, and, in the aftermath of their Hitler-analogous leader being killed over a decade ago now, had been dragging her party toward a more respectable position. While she had gotten into a coalition with the factions Michael loosely translated to himself as Christian democrats and (moderate) democratic socialists — though, like calling the Death Eaters Nazis, the comparisons weren't perfect, just a convenience for him to process the political dynamics going on — Fionn had been very clear that absolutely nobody thought this reflected any legitimate shift in her principles, that she was just finding a way to preserve some degree of the influence her people had on the levers of power.

Though, she hadn't actually been a Death Eater herself, just married to one — and had largely been raised by one of their primary leaders, though she'd since essentially disowned Lestrange — so nobody was _entirely_ sure how much she actually believed all that mad cultish genocidal shite to begin with, but it was obvious even to Michael that she was moderating herself mostly out of political self-interest. She'd been perfectly polite to him, when they'd met at the game, but it'd really only seemed like it standing next to Fudge and her (magic Nazi) husband — comparing Narcissa Malfoy against people like Fionn and the Blacks was as night to day.

Still a racist, he thought, just of a more civil breed.

And, well, Malfoy's efforts to portray the Allied Dark as reformed and perfectly reasonable now had been rather undercut by her people starting race riots and generally coming off like fucking Brownshirts. So. Magic Nazi _apologist_, at the very least. And, unfortunately, one with undeniable political acumen — if nothing else, that she still had any influence at all after being at the very least _closely associated with_ genocidal insurrectionists during that whole civil war thing proved that well enough.

Honestly, between the Malfoys, Michael thought Narcissa might be the bigger threat. If only because Lucius was a shite liar.

Also, he _was_ sort of in gaol at the moment — the thought put another smile on Michael's lips.

"At least _something_ good is coming out of this nonsense."

Michael blinked. "Ah, what?"

With a somewhat reluctant smile on her face, Síomha said, "You said it at our first meeting — visibly associating with legitimate figures can only be good for Saoirse. We're already gotten an influx of new volunteers coming in, and the Ministry was forced to deal with us as an organisation with some influence. They _hate_ it, of course, but they didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter, since we _were_ there in an official capacity. There is protocol where groups of mages protecting muggle political leaders are concerned, it's not important."

Actually, he had a feeling it _was_ important. If Michael understood correctly, Síomha was implying the Ministry was dealing with Saoirse as though they were _officially_ associated with the Republic — sort of like Irish Black Cloaks, in a sense — which was not _at all_ what they'd agreed to. But...he didn't think it really made _that_ much of a difference, probably wasn't worth saying anything.

Besides, he was tinkering with an idea to enter into a formal alliance with the Irish nationalists on the magical side anyway, or at least take a more active role looking after the interests of their own 'muggleborns'. If the Ministry just decided such an alliance already existed on their own, he didn't have to convince the President to sign off on it.

"And, well, Dumbledore is finished."

"What does Dumbledore have to do with anything?"

"The I.C.W..." Síomha hesitated, eyes sliding away from his. "Britain has a _terrible_ reputation in most of the rest of Europe, to put it bluntly." Yes, he had noticed that. That's just what happened when a country had genocidal maniacs strutting about out in the open. "Dumbledore provided assurances our foreign guests would be safe here — I'm told there were weeks of schmoozing and flattering involved in even convincing the international community to let Britain host the Cup in the first place."

Michael _almost_ had sympathy for Dumbledore — he _hated_ the schmoozing and flattery that went hand-in-hand with national-level politics, and his own impression of Dumbledore had him convinced he felt much the same. But he knew too much about Dumbledore's record to actually be bothered that much. Taking another sip of his whiskey, he even chuckled at the Chief Warlock's misfortune. "I'm guessing that's not gonna turn out too well for him, then."

"Not exactly, no. Apparently, the I.C.W. has already threatened to put the Triwizard Tournament on hold, maybe relocate to one of the other schools — Beauxbatons and Durmstrang have both said they'd be willing to host it instead, even on such short notice, if Britain really can't get their act together. Fionn tells me that's unlikely, they're probably just looking to extract a few more concessions. There are active trade disputes right now with Holland and Sicily, so, we'll see.

"And, well, I doubt he'll still be Chief Warlock by the end of October." At Michael's raised eyebrow, Síomha shrugged. "You remember the vote last month, where the Light flipped on Dumbledore? Well, Fionn says they think there's a split in the Allied Dark, that half of them are working with Ars Brittania to, with the Light, force their own nominee to replace Dumbledore."

"Wait, aren't Ars Brittania Light?" Michael knew almost nothing about them, they were small enough of a faction they'd barely come up. Not that he understood the Light well at all, their statements and ideology seemed so confusing and contradictory to him.

Síomha shrugged again. "Ars Brittania and the Allied Dark have more in common than a lot of people think. But anyway, Bríd stopped by while Fionn and I were still stuck with the Aurors, and she thinks, with the Allied Dark crippled in the aftermath of the riot, they have a window to expel Dumbledore and get in a new, less obstructive Chief Warlock before their opposition can recover. It'll be a narrow margin, but she's confident they can pull it off."

Ah, yes, Bríd Ingham. Michael had never actually met her, only heard Fionn speak of her now and again — they were cousins, and not too far apart in age. Most of what they'd talked about had absolutely nothing to do with her work in the Wizengamot. See, Michael was under the impression the Inghams (and a lot of Irish mages, actually) worshipped the _goddess_ Bríd — the same one Saint Brigid certainly wasn't based on even a little bit, he assumed — and wasn't that sort of disrespectful? It'd be like a Christian naming their kids Yahweh or some shite, it was bloody weird.

Turned out, according to Fionn, his cousin had been named in honour of Bríd because — he explained, completely straight-faced, with no hint of awkwardness or shame — his aunt and uncle had been having difficulty conceiving, so, on Imbolc (Saint Brigid's feast day, Michael noticed), they'd prayed to the goddess before _conducting a sex ritual intended to get her to help them have a child_, and his cousin Bríd had been born nine months later. Fionn explained — completely straight-faced, with no hint of awkwardness or shame — that Bríd (the goddess) did things like that sometimes, because she was big on family and children and all that. Which...apparently meant _sex rituals_...because obviously? (It was obvious _to Fionn_, anyway, he didn't seem to understand Michael's confusion at all.)

And Michael could apparently take Fionn's word on this, because it turned out he just so happened to be a priest of Bríd. And, _apparently_, the goddess actually existed in some form, because she _gave Fionn visions_, and even _visited him in his dreams_. But, Michael wasn't supposed to tell anyone this, because, _apparently_, under British law this meant Fionn was a _clear and present danger_ and deserved a _summary death sentence_. Bríd's and the Morrígan's priesthoods were, apparently, one of the firmest bastions of support for independence, partially motivated by a desire to get out from under the Wizengamot so they could _openly practise their religion without threat of being murdered by the state_.

Mages sometimes, honestly...

"Sure, then. If I'm following this, the Ministry will be scrambling to deal with the fallout from the riot — which they can't just sweep under the rug, because they have all of Europe breathing down their necks — and the Wizengamot will be bloody chaos, because one of the major parties is falling apart before our eyes and the presiding officer is about to be replaced, and, in all of this, the Irish came off looking like angels, partially just winning the Cup quick and easy, partially you and yours making out like big damn heroes."

A wary sort of smile twitched at Síomha's lips, amused but not quite certain she should be. "That about sums it up, yes."

"Right." So...aside from the part where he'd nearly been killed by magic Nazis, Michael couldn't have hoped for anything better in this whole mess. Okay then. He turned to Alex, sitting obediently silent on the sofa next to him. "So, we never did get to talk about what you were working on."

Alex straightened in his seat somewhat, setting his own drink aside to address Michael properly — silly boy could be a bit finicky about his manners sometimes. "Yes, well. After asking around a bit, I do recommend we reach out to Tricia Mullet."

Síomha frowned. "What for? She's very good, but she's still just a quidditch player."

Sometimes, Michael was reminded that, for all that Síomha was in the leadership council of her little movement, she was something of an amateur when it came to this sort of politics. Tricia Mullet might just be an athlete, but she was now a _very famous_ athlete — in fact, she was the favourite to win an...MVP poll, he guessed (they didn't call it that, but that's what it was). For all their protests to the contrary, mages truly weren't that different from their muggle cousins, especially on a psychological level. They were vulnerable to the same biases and influences. Tricia Mullet was, essentially, a celebrity. An Irish 'muggleborn' celebrity.

Convincing Tricia Mullet to publicly express support for them and their interests wouldn't be a _total_ victory, but it would be a minor one. And every little bit counted.

There was no point going over that now, though, Síomha wasn't his bloody intern. "Sure, we'll talk over how to go about that later." Probably arrange a (secret) ceremony for the team with the President, pull Mullet (and maybe Troy and Ryan) away for a bit... Or, could just borrow an owl to send a letter directly and invite her to Iveagh House... Hmm...

"And I felt out the Blacks, and the Potter kid."

"Did you, now." Michael hadn't explicitly asked Alex to do that, but he wasn't surprised he had — Alex had always been a slippery little shite, it was a given by this point. "What do you think?"

Alex shrugged. "The Blacks, you'd be an idiot to _trust_ them — they're shit-starters, both of them. I'm convinced they only come off friendly-like because they know it'll anger their peers, and might shake things up a bit. We can only count on them until we start boring them."

"The little one, definitely," Síomha said, with a blank sort of frown. "Fionn thinks she's a priestess of a trickster god."

Jesus Christ, all this pagan shite, Michael did _not_ have the patience for this nonsense. "And what does that mean, exactly?"

"What Alex said — Lyra Black will have your back as long as she thinks you're the most entertaining option. _Entertaining_ here defined as _whatever fucks shite up for the people in charge and makes the largest mess_." Síomha shrugged. "From what I understand, Sirius is somewhat more principled...but only _somewhat_. I wouldn't be surprised if part of the reason he was so friendly to start with was just for fun, but once you form a relationship, I expect he'll stick to it."

"Even under threat of censure from his peers?"

Síomha's lips twisted into a dark, vicious smirk. "He's a Black, Michael. They _live_ for the censure of their peers. Pick up a history book sometime, it's actually pretty funny."

...So, what she was saying was, Sirius Black came from a long tradition of class traitors. Alright, then. Michael could work with that. "Okay, we'll hang on to Sirius as a contact. What about Potter? This is Harry Potter, right? The hell is with that Boy Who Lived thing, anyway?"

"Don't worry about that," Síomha said, sounding somewhat exasperated. "It's Light propaganda, to do with the events at the end of the war a decade ago. It's all nonsense."

Lifting one shoulder in a shrug, Alex drawled, "Yes, well, I could have told you that. All the stories make him out like some kind of wizard Jesus or some shite, but seemed just a normal kid to me. A bit of a sport nut, really. I wheedled at him a little bit, but, far as I can tell, he's actually surprisingly isolated. I mean, you would think, with what people say, that he has a close relationship with Dumbledore, maybe some of the Lords in the Light, but it doesn't seem so. His closest ties _seem_ to be with the Blacks. He had a row with Dumbledore during the match, in fact, though he wouldn't say what it was about. No love lost there, sure. My point is, for all his notoriety, he appears to be..._unattached_."

"Wait." Michael felt a grin pulling at his face, the implications of what Alex was hinting at just, just— "You're telling me _Harry bloody Potter_ is low-hanging fruit? Nobody's claimed him yet, we can just walk up and..."

"Well, the Blacks have claimed him, of course — Sirius is his godfather, apparently, he lives with them now. But he's not committed, politically." Alex shrugged again. "Which isn't unusual, since he _is_ only fourteen, but he's also a bloody noble lord. In their culture, fourteen-year-old lords are expected to have opinions about politics. From the way the kid was talking, I didn't get the feeling anyone's really been working on him yet. He came off pretty ignorant, actually."

...

_Well_.

"Okay, then." Michael threw back the rest of his whiskey, slamming the glass down on the coffee table. "Get some rest, you two. Hallowe'en is going to be _very_ interesting, and we have a lot of work to get done before we even step foot in Hogwarts."

The exhausted, wary look on Síomha's face almost sent Michael into a fit of giggles.

* * *

"Do you know why you're here, Mister Weasley?" Amelia Bones asked him, sounding every bit as exhausted as she looked. He'd bet a whole galleon that she was standing on the other side of the table he'd been seated at because if she sat down she'd fall asleep. Coffee and wit-sharpening potions could only do so much, and it had only been three days since the World Cup riot — he'd be surprised if she'd seen her bed since then.

Given that this was probably the earliest opportunity she'd had to speak to him; that he was sitting in a meeting room in the depths of the DLE, plastered with more anti-surveillance wards than the Gringotts Execution Room; and that she was accompanied by an Unspeakable, the leader of the team of wardcrafters he, Fionn, and Black had run off in order to expand the top box, and a sharply dressed, middle-aged witch who was presumably his boss, Bill could make a few guesses.

It probably wasn't about the little ritual he'd done asking Fionn's goddess to keep an eye on Gin, which shouldn't have left any significant traces, or the definitely-legal-in-Egypt-sorry-didn't-realise-it-wouldn't-be-here tracking spell he'd used to find her when the dust finally settled. And he _knew_ he hadn't killed anyone who wasn't wearing a Death Eater's mask or throwing around Unforgivables. It _might_ be about his participation in the impromptu enlarging of the box, but that had averted at least two international incidents, hadn't harmed anyone, _and _he'd stuck around after everyone else cleared out to reverse it — he couldn't see any reason for anyone to give a single official shite about it.

He wasn't the one who'd overwhelmed the nine mages holding the Death Eaters' (and apparently Ars Brittania's) palings in place, only to tie them into the wards on the stadium so thoroughly, rumour had it, that no one had any idea how they were going to reverse it. If he had to guess, he'd say they thought he had, which was flattering, or (more likely) had asked the goblins for a name to give them a cursebreaker's perspective on what had happened there, which was also kind of flattering, though not quite as much as it would be if they'd thought he was responsible. Being one of the more..._personable_ cursebreakers on payroll (and one of the more presentable, and thus generally one of the least offensive to the average bureaucrat), he was tapped semi-regularly to deal with that sort of request for cooperation, and more often to clarify issues with dig permits, liaise with local governments, and so on.

It really hadn't taken very long at all for him to figure out that the first rule of a successful negotiation was to volunteer absolutely nothing, however, so he kept that guess to himself. "No idea, Madam Bones."

A crystal he hadn't noticed the Unspeakable holding turned red. Some kind of enchantment to determine whether he was telling the truth? Probably. Damn it.

The wardcrafter Black had never properly introduced him to slammed a hand on the table in front of him. "Cut the dragonshite, Weasley!"

He raised an eyebrow at the older man, calmly stretching his legs out under the table, slouching into a deliberately unintimidated posture. It wasn't as though the Ministry man was likely to challenge Bill to an honour duel or try to poison him for not giving a fuck about his posturing. (Both of those had happened within the first three months of his employment with Gringotts.) "You seem to have the advantage of me, Mister...?"

"Forgive me, Mister Weasley. This is Director Warner, from the Department of Public Works, and Wilbur Morgan, one of our senior wardcrafters." Bones didn't introduce herself — they'd met before, several times, when he'd been visiting his father at his office — and obviously Unspeakables required no introduction. "Now, let's try this again. Do you know why you are here, Mister Weasley?"

Well, _fine_. "No, I don't _know_ why I'm here. I can _guess_ that it has something to do with the hijacking of the palings set up by the instigators of the riot, but I had absolutely nothing to do with that. I have no idea why you're talking to _me_, and not any of the other _dozens_ of wardcrafters and cursebreakers who _had_ to have been at the Cup. I haven't even had a chance to get back out there and see what happened — Public Works has had the whole site cordoned off since the Aurors cleared out." Which all four of the other mages in this room _should_ know.

The crystal in the Unspeakable's hand glowed a soft bluish white. The Unspeakable nodded to the Director of Law Enforcement in response to some unasked question.

"Very good, Mister Weasley. We are speaking to you on Mister Morgan's recommendation. What do you make of _this_?" She slid a scroll across the table to him.

"What, you asked if he knew anyone who might be responsible for some bloody mad cursebreaking shite, and he gave you _my _name?" he complained, unrolling the thing. It _appeared_ to be an analysis of whatever had been done to the stadium, simplified slightly to be comprehensible to a lay-person, which only made it clearer that... "Mate, I'm good, but I'm not _insane_," he informed Morgan. No more than the average cursebreaker, at least — _this_ was in an entirely different league. "I _could_ do this, if I had a team of five and three hours to set up. I mean, it's just a Hostile Takeover—" A fairly standard cursebreaking maneuver, technically a counter-defensive battle magic tactic originally developed back in the Thirties and Forties to combat the Gemeenschoppists' absurd floating wards, later co-opted for use by cursebreakers attached to law enforcement. "—but the _scale_...

"The power you'd need to channel... You could tap directly into a ley line, I guess, but that would burn out any single mage who tried it before they got halfway through something like this. Okay, I guess maybe _Dumbledore_ might be able to pull it off, but I think I'd know if there were any sorcerers around practicing cursebreaking, or... I don't know, you might be able to use runic casting to get around that, but you'd still have to be completely mad to— Look, these elements—" He pointed out a few relevant sections of the analysis. "—they'd all have to be enacted simultaneously...and this one. _And_ this one. Which, for the count, means you'd have to be able to focus on at _least _five different things simultaneously.

"And _this_—" Somehow, the second section of the report was even more absurd than the first. "That's geomancy. They treated the stadium like a bloody _reservoir_! Which is _brilliant_, but also _insane_—" Though it did explain the _small earthquake_ that had struck about twenty minutes before the last of the rioters surrendered — a sufficiently rapid redistribution of energy as the magical currents in the area adjusted to the new path they'd been forced into could easily cause such a thing. But, "—you don't _do_ geomancy off the cuff, you just _don't_!" One of the main reasons being, if the 'reservoir' had been _too_ heavily disturbed, that _small_ earthquake might have ended up being large enough to fucking _level_ the stadium, especially since it didn't have appropriate wards integrated into the foundations to prevent that sort of thing — Black had mentioned that, when they'd...

...

_No_.

_Surely _not— She _couldn't_ have, that was _absurd_. Even for a fourteen-year-old version of the Blackheart who'd gotten lost between universes experimenting with time travel. Even if she _had_ been trained by Ciardha _fucking_ Monroe. There were some pretty absurd cursebreaking feats described in Monroe's _fictionalised_ adventure stories — key word _fictionalised_ meaning _more impressive than anything that happened in real life_ — and not one of them was _this insane_. Bellatrix had, once, been both brilliant and insane, but no one had ever called her _suicidal_.

If Lyra _had_ done this, it was _beyond_ reckless...

"Mister Weasley?" Warner prompted him.

"Wha— Oh, sorry, um. You _can't _do something like this without taking at least a few hours to analyse the magical environment, first. No one could." But Black _had_ had enough time to do so, the night before the match. She'd admitted as much when she'd insisted that the only reasonable approach to the issue of enlarging the box was to allow _her_ to do the bulla — neither he nor Fionn had had time to get a close enough look to pick the wards and the structural enchantments apart by that particular method, but _she_ had...and _obviously_ she hadn't simply been blowing smoke, since she _had_ pulled it off, but...

"And do you have any idea who might have had both opportunity and means to do so?"

"No," he said firmly.

That bloody crystal went red again.

"Mister Weasley. William. I do _not_ have the patience for games today," Madam Bones snapped.

"Why?" Bones gave him one of the flattest, most exhausted, _stop dicking me around_ looks he'd ever seen. "Not why don't you— Why do you want to know who did it?"

It was Director Warner who answered. "Personally, I'd just like a bloody explanation of how this came to be. We need to ensure that there are no instabilities remaining which might interfere with our muggle-aversion enchantments. Amelia, on the other hand..."

"Look, William," Bones muttered, finally letting herself collapse into the only unoccupied chair in the room, fingers rubbing at her temples. "Whoever it was, they're not in trouble."

"Whoever it was, they could have killed everyone for half a mile around, and that's just if the runic casting went wrong!"

"Shut up, Morgan," Bones snapped.

He wasn't wrong, though. Bill was feeling very lucky to be breathing, at the moment — runecast spells were more difficult to cast the more complex they were, and the complexity of the spell which _had_ to have been behind _this_... A single moment's slip in concentration on her part, and he very well might be dead right now.

"They've provided a valuable service to the people of Magical Britain in enabling the apprehension of dozens of dangerous criminals. I'd pat them on the back and give them a fucking medal if I wasn't up to my eyeballs in paperwork, with about five times more captives than holding cells, and that's _not_ including the ones who tried to use fumation to escape — _they're_ still stuck in the wards in smoke form. And I need them out. So, who the hell is behind this mess?"

Bill snorted. He couldn't help it. The idea that there were still Death Eaters trapped out there as little clouds of smoke, pinned to the ground... How had she done that, anyway? There wasn't a good spell to block fumation, so far as he knew. It was a transformation one had to do some sort of metamorphic ritual to master, not a cross-planar effect like apparation or shadow-walking, so anti-transport wards had no effect on it whatsoever. His eyes skimmed over the report, looking for the relevant—

"Oh," he said, losing his battle not to laugh. "Oh, that is _too_ good. An _air filtering charm_? That's all it takes to stop those bastards?"

"Yes, yes, we all feel appropriately shown up by a simple solution which seems obvious now that it's been pointed out," Bones said, scathingly. Probably kicking herself over the DLE not figuring this out _years_ ago. Like, at any point during the War. "As I understand it, the problem is this effect is worked into the fabric of the new wards too thoroughly to attack independently, and something about the nature of the way they're tied to the stadium makes them impossible to crack without taking the entire thing apart."

Which, given how bloody _enormous_ the Stadium was, and how it had been integrated into the magical currents of the area, was, for all practical purposes, impossible to do, at least in any reasonable span of time. Right. "And you _swear_ you're not going to have them arrested, or something?"

"William, I swear on the souls of my ancestors that I will not pursue any sort of punitive justice for damage to public property _or _reckless endangerment."

Oh, at least she realised how _stupidly_ dangerous this little trick had been, even if she didn't much seem to care. Though, of course, she didn't realise that it had most likely been carried out by a mad schoolgirl, in the middle of a fucking battlefield. (He'd spoken to Fionn, Black had _definitely_ been out in the fighting, not doing this shite from the relative safety and security of her tent, or anywhere else she was unlikely to be distracted by a stray curse at any fucking point in the casting of what had to have been _dozens_, if not _hundreds_ of runes.) That _might_ make a difference, just a bit.

"Fuck, I'll advocate for whoever is responsible to be inducted into the fucking Order of Merlin if they just tell me how to release those bloody smoke clouds so I can _go home!_ Eat a hot meal. Sleep in my own bed. Assure my niece I haven't died under an avalanche of bloody _parchment_." Bones's eyes narrowed dangerously. "I like you, William, but this is the last time I'm going to ask — and again, I swear upon the souls of my ancestors — if you don't tell me the truth, I'm going to have _you_ taken into custody for obstruction of justice. Who is responsible for this mess? Your _best_ guess."

"Er...well, this is going to sound insane, you realise." Really, it sounded insane to say that _any_ single mage could possibly be behind the work in front of him, but if anyone _could_...

"Humour me."

He sighed, knowing even as he said it how mad it sounded. Hopefully she wouldn't hold it against him. (He really didn't want even a fourteen-year-old version of the Blackheart to have it out for him, especially if she could pull shite like _this_ out of her arse on the fly.) But Bones had sworn that she wouldn't be punished, so... "Lyra Black."

"Lyra—" Bones frowned at him, as though she thought he was having her on, despite the Unspeakable's crystal growing blue. "You're right, that _is_ insane. Lyra Black is fourteen years old. She's in my niece's class at Hogwarts. And the Blacks are on holiday at an undisclosed location, t takes three days to get a response from them by owl."

So...her objection wasn't _really_ that it was a completely absurd suggestion, but that it would be inconvenient if Lyra Black was responsible for her trapped smoke-men? "You asked for my best guess, she's it. Though, have you tried Gamp's Elixir?" That _did_ tend to reverse even the most drastic transfiguration and metamorphic mistakes. "This charm only affects airborne particles up to a couple of points in diameter. Once they revert to human form, they should be able to just walk away. Or, you know, be stunned and arrested."

"They're _smoke_, smartarse," Morgan snapped, obviously annoyed to have been shut down by Bones a moment ago. "Can't exactly swallow a bloody potion, can they."

"Severus Snape came up with an atomised version a couple of years ago to deal with a petrified ghost." A ghost which _Gin_ had been immediately responsible for petrifying (along with _Justin_ Finch-Fletchley) — her lingering guilt over the whole matter was the only reason Bill knew anything about it. "I don't see why it wouldn't work on smoke clouds. It's something to try, at least."

"Ponder, do you know anything about this?"

The Unspeakable shook his head — or hers, those cowls they wore were enchanted to entirely disguise their faces and voices when they were on official business, and this one wasn't especially short or tall. "I'll put in a request to Archives, see what they can scrape up."

"Oh, for fuck's sa— Floo Snape directly. Tell him that if he won't share his method, he _will_ provide a sample sufficient to retrieve our smoky friends, or he _will_ find himself in the company of dementors for the next ten days for contempt. I'll be sure to let him out _just_ in time to go back to dealing with his students."

"You are a cruel woman, Amelia Bones," the Unspeakable noted, any amusement in their tone flattened by the enchanted hood.

"Go!"

"Ah...can _I_ go?"

Bones nodded. "Don't leave the country until you get notice from my office that we've settled the matter to our satisfaction. Shouldn't be more than a few days. Talk to my secretary if you need documentation of your status as a person of interest to secure a leave of absence from the bank."

Pity he couldn't get a note from the DLE to secure a leave of absence from his parents' house. His mum had gone positively _clingy_ in the wake of the riot, and he was still officially on holiday until September. "Shouldn't be a problem. I'll be at the Burrow until the end of the month."

Bones nodded again, waving him toward the door in perfunctory dismissal, already addressing another irritated outburst from Morgan.

Right, that was good enough for Bill. He fled, offering Warner the briefest possible nod of farewell. The smirk she gave him nodding back said that she too would like to be as far as possible from the exhausted, short-tempered Director of Law Enforcement, but in the meanwhile, she'd settle for letting her wardcrafter feed himself to the furious badger in her stead, and good on Bill for getting the _fuck_ out of there.

(It was possible he was reading into it a bit.)

* * *

[Christian democrats and (moderate) democratic socialists] — _Christian democracy refers to a spectrum of political ideology originating in 19th century Europe, characterised mostly by a somewhat conservative stance and centrist economics, i.e. so-called "traditional values" combined with support for a more compassionate capitalism (the formal term is "social market", basically a good welfare state). Used to see a lot of this among Catholics in the US, but not so much anymore, and most of the European Christian democratic parties have drifted right over the last few decades (like pretty much everyone else). Michael uses the term in reference to Ars Publica, which is...sort of applicable. Kind of._

_Democratic socialism is...well, sort of, about as far right as you can get and still be socialist? (People like Sanders and AOC aren't even leftist and __**barely**_ _count as socialists, but don't even get me started.) It's something of an umbrella term, and exactly what it means depends on who you ask, but they tend to be very libertarian when it comes to social/cultural stuff, generally anti-statist (especially where police power is concerned, they're involved in a lot of the police accountability protests over here), and have a mildly post-capitalist but still rather moderate take on the economy. Usually, advocating the greater democratisation of the economy through things like worker co-ops, while leaving the underlying market dynamics mostly in place (though some __**are**_ _anti-market, it depends). Michael is referring to Common Fate this time, which is...well, not a __**bad**_ _comparison, given the spectrum of political thought in magical Britain, though perhaps not quite centrist-y enough._

[Morrígan] — _This hasn't been explained yet, but, by the way? There are actually __**two**_ _beings called Morrígan. One is a goddess of fate and war and death (very Gaelic, like Bríd doesn't really fit in the Powers thing), and the other is a metamorph/legilimens kind-of-not-really Dark Lady, also called the Queen of Nightmares (direct translation of "Morrígan"), quite possibly the oldest living person in the world. (Old enough the goddess originally developed as an echo of her, it's complicated.) When people use Morrígan as an epithet, they usually mean the former; Severus's joke over the summer about Harry being too childish and too male to be the Morrígan was in reference to the latter. —Lysandra_

_A _point _is an archaic unit of measurement equal to 1/12 mm. The shite you learn, writing fanfic... (Also, atomised is definitely a word.) —Leigha_

_Mocking her girlfriend, so mean. —Lysandra_

_Hey, how often do I actually know a word that you don't? Approximately never._

_The Department of Public Works is the Department directly responsible for big projects like the World Cup Stadium, maintaining the wards on public spaces like the Ministry and Diagon Alley, etc. Basically the Ministry's wardcrafting and enchanting department._

_The Gringotts Execution Room is used for reading wills, not killing people. Not that most people who haven't had occasion to use it _know _that..._

_...So, this is a thing we're doing, now, throwing in short 1-2 scene interludes when we don't have an actual chapter ready for publication, yet. I may end up regretting this, but if there's anything anyone particularly wants to see, I'm willing to take suggestions under consideration. No promises that I'll actually write said scene, or that it would be published any time soon (hopefully we won't be delaying on actual chapters _that _often), but I'll think about it. —Leigha_


	7. This was a terrible idea

"Lyra! Where the _hell_ have you been?! We almost missed the train waiting for you!"

Lyra groaned. Somehow, when she'd decided to forego actually _catching_ the train to finish her little trap for Bella, she hadn't considered that Maïa might have a problem with it. She was _barely _half an hour late, honestly!

Shadow walking really _was_ the _most convenient trick ever_, she truly didn't understand why more people didn't invest in learning it. Of course, if they did, then more people would probably start looking into ways to _block_ it, but... Never mind. In any case, she'd _walked_ straight to Maïa, assuming she'd be on the train (which she hadn't _actually_ missed, so what was the problem?), and when she'd realised that Maïa was sitting in a compartment with just Blaise, Theo, and Gin, promptly joined them, sitting down even as she pushed herself across the planar border. She'd materialised an inch or so above the bench she was aiming for, the jolt as she fell onto it reverberating through her spine in a minorly painful way, but it probably still looked good.

"Hi. No one wanted to play with me over here, so I went to visit Bella. She didn't want to play with me, either, but because she's a heinous _bitch_, she knocked me out for like, twenty hours while she went off to meet with Solange Martin, and then I got caught up designing— You know what, it's not important. I was in Aquitania. Now I'm here. Did I hear you talking about the Wizengamot?"

Because she was _pretty sure_ they'd been talking about the Wizengamot. Specifically, how the Allied Dark and Ars Brittania were dealing with half their people being dead or implicated in the World Cup Riot, a subject which she was herself rather curious about.

"What— _No_, did you just say you were visiting _Bella_? As in..."

"Yes, Lyra, I thought we talked about the _admitting we're in contact with our notoriously murderous mum_ thing."

"Well, yeah, we did, but I kind of doubt Theo and Gin are going to turn me over to the Aurors, and doesn't everyone here know that she's not actually my mother?"

"If you're not her clone, where the hell did you come from, then?" Gin asked — _oh, apparently not_ — even as Blaise shook his head with an overly-exaggerated expression of exasperation, and Maïa snapped her fingers in front of Lyra's nose.

"Focus, Lyra! What the _hell_ do you mean you were visiting Bella? Why— What were you _thinking_?"

"Er...something along the lines of _everyone else is busy packing or moping and doesn't want to deal with me being insane and if I don't do _something, right now_, I might die, or start setting things on fire so Sirius will get out of bed, and Bella _has _to know what this is like, and Dora's on the Continent trying to find her, so really it's her responsibility to entertain me anyway, and she's probably a better duelist than Dora by like, a _lot — which she is, by the way — _and that sounds like fun, or at least a good way to exhaust myself_ — which it _wasn't_, by the way. Yes, obviously she knows what being mad is like, but she was busy too and didn't want to deal with me being insane, either, so we only played one little game — the most _boring_ game, I never even got her to _move_ — though she did use this cool space-warping thing I have _got_ to figure out — and then she beat me in about twenty duels in fifteen minutes, and then she started poking holes in me because I was annoying her, and when I _finally_ agreed to leave her alone, she knocked me out, because she somehow knew I was lying. Bitch."

"God, I'm surprised she didn't just _kill you_ — this is _Bellatrix Lestrange_ we're talking about! Out of _all_ the people in the world you could've gone to annoy... How did you even _find_ her?"

"Black."

"What?"

"Bella _Black_. The Lestranges apparently dissolved her marriage contract back in the Eighties, so she's a Black again. Not that most people know that, but. Not important. And she wouldn't kill me, or not just for being annoying, at least. Filicide is _much_ less acceptable than patricide, and she _has _been telling people I'm her daughter — or, she's been telling werewolves and Lise Delacour, at least — and I'm pretty sure I'm on her list, anyway. And it wasn't hard to find her, I already knew where she was." And if she hadn't, she was sure Eris would have told her. Really, that was just a silly question.

"You _what_? How...?"

"Wait, did you think this was the _first_ time I'd visited her?"

"You— Did you all know about this?" Maïa demanded of the others. Apparently she had. Weird.

Blaise, who had been watching them with rapt attention, nodded. Theo and Gin seemed to be discussing their training schedule, muttering over a pocket calendar and hardly paying them any attention at all. It actually took a moment for Maïa's question to register, whereupon Theo looked up and shrugged. "No, but I'm not surprised."

Gin nodded. "Same. Have you _met_ Black? Why wouldn't you expect her to just go have tea with the most terrifying Dark Lady since Cromwell?"

"I wouldn't go have _tea_ with her, tea is terrible. But I had to go adjust the wards to let her in when she finally got all her werewolves to the Vinyard, and have _words_ with her about Riddle — she doesn't want to help kill him, which, _fine_, more fun for us! but she's not going to try to stop us, either — and there's this really neat runic augmentation thing they did, and we kind of got off topic and I ended up just talking to her for a few hours, she's kind of great. Or, well, I _thought_ so, before she knocked me out and did something to my head — seriously, I didn't even know it was _possible_ to keep me unconscious for twenty fucking hours when I'm like this, and it feels like I was out for a week, like I slept through the most fun part of the Madness, which apparently is the entire point of the spell. It's _awful_, and she _has_ to hate this thing as much as I do, Mickey said she tried to stab _Riddle_ for using it on her, once, and that was _while_ she was still his mind-slave, which I'm pretty sure makes her the world's _biggest fucking hypocrite_! It's fine, though, I got her back for it. Or I will have done, once she gets back to the Vinyard. That's why I missed the train, I was designing a trap ward to bind her to her bedroom for the next few days, ruin her week just like she ruined mine. You know, just to make it clear that fucking with my head is _not okay_, and I might not be able to touch her in an actual fight but I _can_ hurt her too, if I want to."

Maïa's mouth was hanging open, just the slightest bit, blinking at her, obviously at a loss for words, which was kind of funny, Maïa was hardly ever speechless. Before she came up with something to say, or Lyra could try to change the subject back to the Wizengamot, because Cissy was _up to something_ and wouldn't tell her what it was, Blaise cut in. "Mickey?"

"Oh, Fenrir. Don't call him Mickey, only Bella's allowed. And me, because he's my Fictional Foster-Father, and also they can't stop me. Did I tell you that?" She thought she had at some point, but she'd be the first to admit she didn't pay that much attention to who'd been told what unless it meant she was going to have to do a lot of tedious repeating herself later. "That if Bella had used bio-alchemy to make herself a kid, she said she probably would have given it to him to raise? So I was officially raised by werewolf terrorists, now. If anyone asks."

"Seriously! Where did you come from, really?"

"Why would you think it's a good idea to set a trap to annoy _Bellatrix bloody Lestrange_?!"

Obviously Lyra preferred to answer Maïa's question, mostly because it was just _funny_, watching Red get all annoyed over not knowing something that everyone else around her knew. "Black, and why _wouldn't_ I? I can't take her in a straight fight, and I really couldn't let her just get away with fucking with my head."

Maïa let out an adorable little _argh_ of frustration. "Sometimes, you really, _really_ should just let it go! What is she going to do in response? Did you even think about that before you went and did something _specifically intended_ to piss off the most dangerous person you've ever met?!"

"Well, it's not like she's going to come to Hogwarts just to curse me to seven hells. I expect by the time we run into each other again, she'll be over it. It's not like it's a big public thing that she'd _have_ to respond to so _other people_ know they can't get away with shite like that, and it's a completely proportionate response."

Maïa's eyes narrowed in some vaguely negative expression. Scorn? Concern? (Lyra was terrible at this.) "Are you _honestly_ telling me that if you were in her place, you wouldn't come after yourself for pulling something like that?"

"If I was in her place, I wouldn't have knocked me out to begin with, but...yes? I mean, she _should_ know why I did it. I'd actually be kind of surprised if she didn't _expect_ me to retaliate in some way. It's fine, Maïa, really." Maïa tried to offer some other spurious objection, but what more was there to say on the subject, really? Even if she _did_ manage to somehow convince Lyra that getting Bella back was a bad idea, it was _far_ too late to not do it _now_. "So, Theo, has Cissy told you how she's planning to remain un-fucked by the entirety of the Ministry and half the I.C.W., given that she and Lucy vouched for all those Death Eaters who were caught in the riot?" Not to mention, she'd sent Lucy out to get caught as well, made sure everyone would know he was there even if he wasn't caught, even.

"Um, no. No, she said she has a plan that will supposedly take care of the infighting and also foil the accusation that the Malfoys gave false testimony on behalf of actual Death Eaters back in Eighty-One. I guess Lady Longbottom demanding that they put Lord Malfoy on trial as soon as possible is part of it, but that's all I know. Well, and she said, when you asked I should tell you that you'll find out in the papers like everyone else, it doesn't involve you, and no, you aren't going to have to break her out of Azkaban, this is going to work."

Gin snorted. "Of course it is, this is _Narcissa Malfoy_ we're talking about, here. Every time someone decides to oppose her, their plot goes all Icarian on them just when it looks like they've got her cornered, it's bloody absurd." ("That's what I told her," Blaise interjected. He had, yes, because neither he nor Cissy seemed to realise that she _really_ wasn't concerned about _that_. She just wanted to know what was happening!) "But why would Malfoy be telling _you_ shite, Theo, and not Black?"

Theo flushed slightly. "Well, um. I guess you didn't hear, then? My father was killed in the riot."

"Oh, Theo, I'm so sorry!"

Blaise rolled his eyes. "Don't be, Maïa, he was a controlling, abusive bastard. Our Theo's better off without him."

"Mmm, yeah. You're welcome, by the way." Every head in the compartment turned toward Lyra. She smirked at the lot of them, gave them about two seconds to put it together.

Dear Cadmus had had an unfortunate encounter with a _really_ neat beheading curse while trying to kill some Auror cadet during the World Cup Riot. At least, Lyra _hoped_ he'd been a cadet — he'd gotten separated from the rest of his little four-man squad in the fighting and managed to get himself disarmed somehow, couldn't find his wand, had been squirming under, if she wasn't much mistaken, a Cholic Curse. Not the most _painful_ curse Cygnus had ever used on her, but it did have longer-lasting effects than most of the more strictly illusory pain spells, since it actually did cause increasingly intense muscle spasms throughout the victim's gastro-intestinal tract. One of the more dangerous, too, if it was kept up too long.

It was _possible_ Cadmus hadn't actually been planning to rip the baby Auror apart from the inside out (a Cholic Curse was a messy way to die), just play with him a bit and then knock him out or leave him curled up in pain on the ground being all pathetic while he went off to find something more interesting to do, but she honestly doubted that he would have restrained himself. He was, after all, one of the (relatively) few rioters actually wearing a Death Eater mask, which she expected meant that he had no love for the Aurors and no mercy for idiots. And Sirius had said that she could put down anyone wearing a mask or using lethal spells _preferably_ non-lethally, which wasn't at _all_ the same as making a rule against lethal measures in general, or even _try not to kill anyone_, and she'd never had an opportunity to use that spell outside of practice. So she'd gone ahead and done it, just..._snick_ — nine blade-like planes of force arranged themselves in an iris diaphragm around his neck before twisting closed, narrowing the aperture to nothing and resulting in the head just kind of sitting there in mid-air for about half a second while the body collapsed to the ground, spurting blood from neatly severed arteries.

(Ciardha hadn't even liked her to _practice_ that sort of thing, because when would she ever need to behead someone so elaborately? Gods forbid she actually have a bit of fun in the event that she _did_ ever have an occasion to behead anything bigger than a pixie...)

It'd been kind of hilarious, actually, especially the look on the baby Auror's face. Probably would have been better if Cadmus _hadn't _been masked. She bet he would have looked surprised. As it was, she couldn't see his face at all until his head hit the ground and the mask fell off. Somehow, she hadn't expected the first person she killed — or the first one she _knew_ she had killed, at least — to be someone she'd known personally, back in her old life.

Not that she _minded_. She'd mostly been vaguely annoyed when she realised it, because if (when) Cissy found out that Lyra had killed him, she'd think she did it because Cissy had asked her to — Nott and Parkinson were leading the attempt to fracture the Allied Dark which had completely disrupted Cissy's plans for an alliance with Ars Publica and Common Fate over the summer — when she _really_ hadn't. If she _had_ known who he was, she might have used something non-lethal on him specifically because she'd _just_ told Cissy she wouldn't be doing her any favours any time soon, but whatever. It had been far too late to do anything about it by the time she'd realised her mistake, so she'd simply shrugged and thrown the baby Auror a Black Cloaks' salute on a whim (she kind of doubted he'd recognised it — Uncle Draco had taught her, but they'd all been wiped out here in the Forties) before skipping off to find someone more interesting to actually _fight_.

"Thanks. I wasn't going to tell people, but I guess you don't care if this lot know?"

"Know _what_?" Maïa, for once seemed to be the last one to figure out what was going on, or else had and thought she was wrong for some reason.

"Why would I care?"

"Lyra killed the bastard, out there running around with his bloody Death Eater mask on, throwing lethal curses around and using torture spells on Aurors. They recovered his wand, there was more than enough evidence to rule cutting his fucking head off a reasonable degree of force, given the threat he presented."

Lyra really couldn't help but giggle a little. "Like you would've cared if it wasn't?"

Theo rolled his eyes. "Roger wanted to demand justice even though it _was_ — he actually _liked_ my father. But the rest of the regency council talked him out of it."

"You got a whole _council_ of regents? Tough luck, mate." Blaise gave Theo a sympathetic grimace, then grinned. "Still, means you don't have to deal with the political shite for a few more years, at least."

"Or ever, would be nice. I _hate_ politics. Might just amend the House laws when I come of age so the heads of the client houses keep most of the responsibilities, make them—"

He was cut off by a rather annoyed "_Lyra_," from Maïa. "Why didn't you _tell_ me about... You said the riot wasn't a big deal, everyone was safe, and... You actually went _out_ in it, in the fighting?"

"Well, _yes_, obviously. It's not like I would have let Cadmus into the bloody tent. And I was advised that you probably wouldn't take it well if I told you how much fun it was, even if I didn't really do anything out of the ordinary."

By Sirius, actually.

They'd ended up just kind of walking around the fields of destroyed tents talking about random shite for hours after the battle came to its rather abrupt climax, because she couldn't really stand the thought of facing Harry and Cissy and Zee after her little freak out before she'd _finally_ gotten to get out there, and the lecture Zee was _bound_ to give her on why it wasn't okay to lose her temper like that (which she had tried to do anyway when they'd finally come back, but Lyra had taken the opportunity to repay the silencing she'd used in her little show for Dumbledore until she gave up). It wasn't like she had anything to say that Lyra didn't already know, she was perfectly capable of coming up with reasons she really didn't want to kill Cissy for herself, and it should be obvious that _losing_ her temper meant she hadn't had enough control of herself to _not_ lose it, so.

It wasn't like either of them had been _tired_, really. Lyra had been a bit _fried_ — hijacking the Death Eaters' palings at the end was _probably_ the single biggest working she'd ever done. Most of it had been runic casting, exploiting ambient magic, so she hadn't even had to channel most of the energy involved, and she'd _still_ managed to knock herself out, just from the mental strain of it. But being magically exhausted — or at least worn out, as she hadn't quite started overchannelling but she _had_ been pushing her limits...which was saying kind of a lot since she'd actually started to come into her power over the summer — and kind of fuzzy-headed and tapped out as far as her ability to focus went didn't mean she hadn't still been running high on the adrenaline from the fight. Sirius had also informed her that the best thing to do in that situation was find someone to screw her brains out, but apparently that wasn't him volunteering (even if saying _no_ had sounded rather painful). So they'd just...walked. And talked. And because Zee had reminded her that she didn't _need_ to set such high standards for herself as far as keeping secrets and pretending to be normal went, she'd ended up telling him pretty much everything. (He'd been _insufferable_ about the _you're-really-Bellatrix-I-totally-knew-it_ part.)

At some point in the course of their talk — after it was pointed out that she _probably_ should have invited Maïa to the match, even if she did hate quidditch, and before they'd come up with general rules about who it was and was not acceptable to kill, and in what circumstances — it had come up that normal people didn't tend to _like_ fighting, really. Which Lyra _had_ already known, insofar as they got scared or guilty or whatever about almost getting killed or hurting people themselves. And she _probably_ could have guessed that they didn't appreciate the sheer _chaos_ of a battlefield _nearly_ as much as she did.

But she really wouldn't have guessed that most people, normal people, would think it was disturbing and horrifying if she told them how exhilarating and perfect the whole thing had been, how _right_ it had felt, being in the middle of the chaos and destruction and violence, being a _part_ of it, like she never really was with any other human thing. How in the middle of the battle, surrounded by pain and death and madness, she'd actually felt _relaxed_, not having to hold herself back for once in her entire fucking life. How it had been _incredibly frustrating_ that it had ended so soon, and forcing herself to stop had been almost _painful_, even _after _getting hit by a Cruciatus _and _exhausting herself by hijacking the Death Eaters' palings.

(In less-frustrated hindsight, that had been _incredibly_ dangerous and probably not worth it, given the likelihood of killing everyone there, including herself. She still couldn't believe they were talking about letting her into the Order of Merlin for it. She also couldn't believe Sirius hadn't just stunned her from behind when she'd refused to tell him what she was doing — Ciardha definitely would have. Though she supposed Ciardha would have been able to figure out what she was doing, so he might have let her do it if she'd let him help, that would've made it much safer...)

All of which Siri had agreed with (he'd even admitted that battle was better than sex), but all of which he'd told her not to tell anyone else, because pretty much everyone outside the Family could get weird about these things, and while Lyra wasn't terribly concerned about making normal people uncomfortable, it would definitely draw more attention to the fact that she wasn't one of them, and in fact might be a danger to them and should be treated as such — _i.e._, killed before she could grow into a threat on par with Other Bella. (Not unreasonable, given the aforementioned stupidly dangerous stunt she'd pulled at the end, there.) Also, the ones who _weren't_ scared of her would probably nag her about it. (She'd put that one together herself, based on Harry's reaction in the days after the riot.)

She was pretty sure she could admit to killing Cadmus Nott, though, and the two other mages the DLE's forensics people had so far determined she was responsible for (also determined to be self-defence, given the evidence their wands had provided). That was, after all, a matter of official record. It would probably be in the _Prophet_, actually, as soon as the DLE finished their analyses of the bodies. Not that the DLE would officially release it, but everyone knew the Ministry was an absolute cesspool of corruption — if something was written down anywhere there was _someone_ who could and would get you a copy, for the right price. And even if Skeeter and the like didn't decide that the Blackheart's daughter beheading the heads of other Noble Houses was prime gossip material, Dumbledore's people would probably leak it in a further effort to discredit the Blacks. So Maïa was going to find out anyway.

Though maybe she shouldn't have admitted that Sirius had told her not to talk about it? Bugger.

"Bill said you hijacked the Death Eaters' palings and made them permanent, and no one can figure out how to get rid of them, now. That's pretty out of the ordinary."

"Is he the one who narked on me about that? I thought it was Siri. He has kind of a weird sense of humour, convincing them to induct _me_ into the Order of Merlin is the sort of thing he'd think—"

"You _killed someone_, Lyra! You didn't think that was a big deal?!"

"It was a _riot_, Maïa. It's not like I was the only one who killed someone. Siri got five, and he was _avoiding_ lethal spells. I heard Lovegood took out at _least_ a couple dozen."

"I _saw_ her kill at least three," Gin volunteered.

Lyra nodded. "So in comparison, me killing three _total_ is hardly impressive."

Blaise chuckled. "That's not what she meant, Lyra. Most people consider getting into a life-or-death situation like that to be a big deal, even if they _don't_ kill anyone, which is _also_ generally considered a significant event that one might tell one's girlfriend about."

"Wait, _girlfriend_? You mean you two are shagging now?"

"_Ginny_!" Maïa exclaimed, going _very_ red. (The answer was _no_, because Maïa got all skittish and flustered and pulled away when they were snogging and Lyra's hands drifted anywhere below her shoulders. It was kind of funny, actually.)

"Okay, now you're making it sound like I _should_ have told her about the riot." Damn it! Why couldn't people give her consistent advice on shite like this?

(Gin grinned. "Just don't forget the silencing, yeah?")

"Why wouldn't you?"

Fuck it, she'd already mentioned it and Maïa was already annoyed, might as well throw in for a galleon. "Sirius told me not to because I'd sound like a vicious little psychopath who takes _way_ too much pleasure in bloodlust and battle madness if I did, and that's not generally considered attractive, except to other crazy people, and Maïa is not that crazy."

Blaise rolled his eyes, was definitely going to say something, but Maïa had apparently heard her name. "I'm not _that_ crazy? He's hardly even _met_ me, where does he get off— What is his problem with me, anyway?"

Oh. Well, that was unexpected. Not unwelcome and kind of confusing, but they could talk about Sirius instead of her, that was fine. "Problem?"

"He spent the entire time we were in Ms Zabini's flat being a complete _arse_, making fun of us going out, and just— You didn't notice, did you?"

"Well it's kind of hard to miss Siri being an arse, so yes, I noticed, but he mostly just thinks it's funny that I'm dating _anyone_. It has nothing to do with _you_."

Maïa gave her a very Minerva McGonagall -esque sniff of disapproval. "Oh, yes, I'm only fifty per cent of the couple he's mocking. Nothing to do with me _at all_."

"You know what I mean." At least, she _thought_ she did. Maybe she didn't. She decided to elaborate just in case. "It doesn't matter _who_ you are, me being in a romantic relationship with a normal person is still going to be absurd."

"Maybe I'm not a normal person, did he ever think of that?"

"Er...probably not. I mean, you're human and you're not a Black, so..." Granted, even most of the Blacks had thought Bella a bit much to handle most of the time, but at least they were generally familiar with the Madness, and hadn't really ever _expected _her to act convincingly human. (Though Wally had always found it terribly frustrating that she couldn't even fake it.)

"Well, she _did_ just go from freaking out about you killing people to being all annoyed about Sirius Black being...Sirius Black," Gin pointed out. "I had to sit next to him at the World Cup, I'm pretty sure he's _always_ an arse," she informed Maïa, as an aside. "But I'm also pretty sure that's not normal."

"Like you have any room to talk," Maïa snapped. "I don't see _you_ objecting to Lyra killing people over there."

Okay, now Lyra was confused. Did Maïa _want_ to be considered a normal person or not? Before she could ask, Gin drawled, "I was _there_. Plus I have first-person memories of Tom Riddle vivisecting muggles on his summer hols floating around in my head." Really? _Neat_. Lyra should see if she could find a pensieve in the Vault, or maybe make a new one, could be a fun enchanting proje— _Ooh_, Flamel was going to be teaching Divs! Maybe she'd give her some pointers. She _had_ been instrumental in developing the first one, and they hadn't changed much in the centuries since... "Black killing someone in the heat of battle isn't exactly shocking in comparison." Everyone turned to stare at Gin, who shrugged. After a too-long pause that was probably awkward for the rest of them, she rolled her eyes. "How about those Cannons?"

Blaise snorted, returning to their previous conversation. "It's easier to be annoyed with Sirius than admit that she doesn't care that she's thinking about snogging Lyra even though Lyra just admitted to killing several people and doesn't see why that's a big deal." Hermione kicked the only part of him she could reach, contorted on the bench across from them as he was, which was his left shin. "Ow?"

"It's also easier to be annoyed with _you_ for reading my bloody mind when I've told you not to _dozens_ of times now!"

"You really think I have to read your mind to know _that_? It wasn't Sirius who decided you weren't that insane, anyway, it was Lyra. _And_," he added, as she opened her mouth to protest, "in comparison to Mirabella who thinks this whole thing is just _precious_, Little Lyra growing up, and Sirius, who keeps making jokes about her first time, you _are_ a normal, sane person."

Lyra nodded. "They've both been completely insufferable about it."

"I don't know if I've mentioned this, Zabini, but your mum is kind of scary. Is she _actually_, you know..."

"Blaise is not at liberty to confirm or deny the rumours about Mira murdering her husbands," Theo informed Gin. "I know what you mean, though, she seems so normal and then does shite like giving a five-year-old a pet boggart."

"Or does some weird mind-control shite to stop Black from murdering Lady Malfoy."

"It wasn't mind-control, just—"

Maïa managed to figure out a response to the revelation that she was, in fact, a comparatively normal, sane person (regardless of whether she wanted to be or not) before Blaise could explain the _focus on me and I'll tell you why everything just went to hell and how to salvage the situation _thing Zee was so very good at. "Lyra, I've known who you are and where you came from for the better part of two _years_, subjectively." ("Where did she come from?!") "And I asked you to be my girlfriend _anyway_. If you get caught up in a bloody _riot_, where people are _killing each other_, and you _could have died_, I want to know about it. And I _definitely_ want to know if you've killed someone!"

Lyra blinked. "Are you sure? Because you said you _didn't_ want to know about spider hunting, and the riot was _way_ more fun than that. I kind of thought your interest in knowing about potentially deadly situations was inversely proportional to how much fun I'm having without you."

"I don't want..._details_, I just— I refuse to believe that you think being involved in a riot is perfectly ordinary and unworthy of comment."

Oh, well, no, she didn't. That was kind of the opposite of what she'd thought about it, actually. "I didn't say the _riot_ was ordinary, just that I didn't do anything particularly out of the ordinary in context. Well, the thing with the palings might have been, a bit, but I'd just been crucio'd so I was kind of annoyed, and Lovegood stole everyone worth fighting, which was _very _frustrating. And it's not unworthy of comment, or, I don't know, _insignificant_. Actually, as far as life experiences go, it's probably one of the most significant I can think of off the top of my head. I just don't want to go back to the thing where you're all awkward because you don't want to want me to be your girlfriend."

"Careful, Black," Gin drawled, "it almost sounded like you actually care what your girlfriend thinks of you for a second there." Blaise snorted again, trying to suppress a laugh. Maïa glared at them in turn.

"Of course I care what Maïa thinks of me, she gets all annoying and tedious and avoidant when I freak her out, and I don't want to sit through the first week of classes with no one to talk to." Well, Harry, but Harry couldn't really hold up his end of a decent conversation, and he could probably actually use the beginning of the year _let's see if you dunderheads actually remember anything from last year_ revision shite.

The glare shifted to Lyra. "Just tell me. It's not as though I don't already know that you did _something _you think I won't like. Though I already know you _killed people_, so I'm not really sure _what_—"

"She _liked_ it," Gin said.

"Hey! I was going to tell her." As soon as she had figured out exactly what to say, because _I liked it_ was true, but fell _so_ short of capturing the essence of why the riot was significant that it was actually kind of funny.

"You were being all tedious and avoidant about it."

"You're a terrible minion." And that smirk of hers looked _awfully_ like an expression one might find on Professor Riddle. Kind of uncanny, really.

It disappeared into a glare almost immediately. "That would be because I'm _not your minion_, God _damn_ it!"

Lyra smirked at her. "You totally—"

"You liked...killing people?"

Oh. Right. _Focus, Lyra_. "No... I mean, killing people is fine, I didn't _dislike_ it, but if I was going to kill someone for fun, I think I'd want to be..._closer_ to it. Beheading some random arsehole at twenty paces is kind of... There's no _danger_ in it, you know? No _risk_. And the other two, well...that's just what _happens_ when you're in a battle to the death and you _lose_." One of them she hadn't even realised she'd killed, and the other she'd been more focused on getting that fire-to-lightning translation (_finally_) than on the wizard at the other end of it. "I liked the _fighting_, just the chaos of it, and people trying to kill _me_, the adrenaline and battle madness. And I liked...not having to pretend to be less than I am, being able to push the limits of what I'm actually capable of, rather than stopping myself from hurting people by accident because they just can't _keep up_, and I'll scare them if I don't hold back, or on purpose, because they're slow and frustrating and it's one of those days where I just hate everyone for existing, and I don't _care_ if I scare them. I... It was...probably the best thing I've ever done. Like being mad, but with the whole world keeping up for once, or Walpurgis, but without Choice making sure no one actually gets hurt, so more _real_, and just—

"I did _kind of_ know that it would be great, being in an actual battle. Like spider-hunting, but better. But I didn't realise... I'm pretty sure that's actually what I was born to do. I mean, not _literally_, but... I don't know, I'm not good at _feelings _things. Just, if it could have gone on until I just passed out from exhaustion, that would have been perfect." Really, she shouldn't have told Siri to revive her if she passed out, but she'd needed to see if it _worked_. "I _completely_ understand, now, why Bella wouldn't have wanted to just finish the takeover of Britain, if every battle is like that. We could do that every single fucking day, and that would be _great_. I kind of suspect that the way I feel about fighting for my life — against intelligent, competent opponents, with _real_ stakes — is how most people feel about sex, and I might actually be sad that it's over, especially since I don't know when I'll get to do it again."

Siri had said that, no, the post-battle emptiness and dissatisfaction and directionless anger that (ironically) made her want to kill people more than she had when she was actually fighting that she'd described for him wasn't what sadness felt like — that was what being a fucking _addict_ felt like. But given the (increasingly familiar) look of horror on Maïa's face, admitting that she was kind of low-key constantly distracted by longing to do it again and that she was _intensely annoyed_ at her past self for agreeing not to engineer any riots or other significant conflicts specifically so that she could get into a real fight — that she _needed_ to do it again (that hunting spiders and practicing dueling, even with Siri or Dora, were just pale imitations, and she already knew they weren't going to cut it anymore), and wasn't sure she'd be able to stop herself if she came across an opportunity to spark off such a conflict, regardless of said agreement — was probably a bad idea.

Even Eris's obvious disapproval of her intentionally putting herself in such a dangerous situation didn't really put her off the idea — the goddess admitted that she'd long since come to terms with the fact that her Bellatrices needed to fight, it was in their nature, and given the chaos inherent to the battlefield it wasn't terribly difficult for her to sway the odds of survival in their favour, not like with the lethifold, or when Bella was escaping from the Unspeakables. (An echo of resignation accompanied the sense of cool disapproval which emanated from the back of her mind whenever she thought about the subject, which was pretty much all the time.)

She was going to go ahead and say that Maïa was still more fun than it sounded like James Potter had been — honestly, he sounded like a prat, if Siri had to have fancied one of Harry's parents Evans sounded by _far_ the better option — but apparently Sirius had been closer than she'd thought, when he'd explained exactly why the idea of Lyra dating a normal person was so incredibly amusing. That didn't mean, though, that Maïa wasn't currently staring at her looking vaguely frightened. Lyra's eyes flicked over to Blaise almost instinctively — fixing things like this was kind of his job. More than it was hers, anyway.

"Alright, there, Maïa?" he asked, sounding a little amused. Probably because he thought it was funny Lyra couldn't do the whole _putting people at ease_ thing that came so naturally to Zabinis _at all_. Arse.

"It's just... Do you ever have moments when you become acutely aware that we're sitting in the same room as a young Bellatrix Lestrange?"

"That bitch and I are _very_ different people. Also, it's Black," Lyra corrected her, _again_. "If you ever call her _Lestrange_ to her face she'll probably hex you." At least, Lyra would expect to be hexed if she did that — _just to reinforce the point a bit_, as Walburga would have said.

"To her _face_? Why would I— I thought you said she wasn't coming back to Britain!"

"She's not planning to _do_ anything here, but she might visit at some point. I mean, it's not like she said anything, but it's not out of the question. There _is_ going to be a Triwizard Tournament on, you know. Or we could go to France some weekend, I guess. After her being annoyed with me for trapping her in her bedroom has worn off, obviously."

"What? No! Why would you even _suggest_..."

"Isn't meeting each other's family part of the whole dating thing?" She knew it was with courting, assuming someone actually managed to find an appropriate match whose family they didn't already know. She, for example, had definitely met all of the parents of everyone in her social circle (which included anyone Arcturus would have considered selling her off to) by the time she'd started school. Granted, she hadn't known them _well_, but she didn't really know _anyone_ well. Though if she were going to do the whole _marriage_ thing, she probably would have to meet more people in this timeline, if only because the parents she knew, she knew from when they were all kids in her old universe, and they definitely didn't know _her_.

Fortunately, Bella had made herself so notorious in the past thirty years that no one in their right mind would want their son to marry her daughter, no matter how magically powerful and brilliant and wealthy she was.

Anyway, talking. "Really, you're getting off easy. Yes, Sirius and Bella can be complete shites, but at least you don't have to put up with sixty-five person holiday dinners." Silver lining to Bella fucking _murdering_ most of the House, that. "If we go to France, I can meet your father's family, too." And she could try to figure out what the deal was with those wards on (or maybe just _near_) Maïa's grandmother's house.

"_What_? NO! I mean— You don't have to meet your girlfriend's 'parents'—" She put the word in quotation marks with her fingers. "—when they're an escaped mass murderer who's particularly notorious for killing people in your bloody demographic!"

Lyra giggled at her vehemence. "She doesn't care that you're muggleborn. I actually tried to annoy her with that, but she was definitely more focused on the _having a girlfriend_ part."

"Why would she care that you're dating a girl?" Gin asked, a tiny furrow of confusion forming between her eyebrows. "Wasn't she kind of dating Blaise's mum for ages?"

"She doesn't care about the _girl _part, either, just thinks it's weird as hell that I'm in a romantic relationship. Pretty much the same as Sirius, actually." Maïa frowned at this, clearly annoyed that everyone thought Lyra dating (her) was a weird concept. Well, Zee was reserving judgment until she met Maïa herself, since Lyra couldn't give her nearly enough information about the sort of person Maïa was, and Blaise thought it depended on how well (and how quickly) Maïa got over her whole _pretending to be a good person_ thing. But in the meanwhile, he also thought it was going to be an enormous pain in the arse, holding her hand through the whole thing. (Metaphorically.) "But yes," she said, in response to Gin's question. "They've known each other since they were eleven, but _wasn't_ suggests it's not an ongoing thing? I'm about ninety per cent certain that Zee told Bella about the World Cup in person—"

"I _am_ at liberty to deny _that_," Blaise cut in.

Lyra stuck her tongue out at him. "Bella didn't deny that Zee is screwing her as well as Sirius when I said that that's basically the same as Bella fucking Sirius herself, just that it really, _really_ wasn't. The same, I mean. I don't think their relationship counts as _dating_, though. It's more of a soul mate, complementary insanity sort of thing. So Bella thinks it's weird that I'm attempting to establish a long-term relationship with someone ostensibly _sane_." Which wasn't _quite_ the same as Sirius's point that there were things about Lyra that Maïa would probably never be comfortable with, even if Lyra's general lack of humanity _did_ happen to be on that list. "Well, that and I doubt she gets the concept of _dating_ in general any more than I do."

She shrugged. She'd asked Zee about the whole _relationship_ thing, trying to get an idea of how they generally worked. Zee had written off all of her _but that doesn't make sense_ and _what is even the point of this _moments as _muggle cultural differences, Lyra, don't worry about it._ So she wasn't. If she fucked it up too badly, she was sure Maïa would let her know.

"_Ostensibly_ sane?"

Lyra groaned. "Okay, just— Do you _want_ to be considered a normal person or not? Because I'll be the first to admit that I'm the _worst_ judge of people, you could be as mad as Luna in some way I'm just not seeing, and Siri did suggest that you probably weren't as normal as you seem if you actually want to date _me_, so it could really go either way."

Maïa apparently didn't know the answer to that question any more than Lyra did. She just _sat there_, staring, for about three seconds before her eyes narrowed. "Wait, you changed the subject!" Lyra was...pretty sure she hadn't? "I can't _believe_ I have to say this, but you can't just– just _kill people for fun_, Lyra!" she exclaimed, changing the subject. (Hypocrite.)

"Well, _obviously_. Didn't I just say that it wasn't about killing people?" Obviously Maïa didn't get this any more than Lyra got the idea of dating.

"Yes, Lyra. But _people died_."

"People who were using lethal force, in the middle of a riot that they started. It's not like I just decided to go murder a bunch of idiots minding their own business in the middle of Charing or something." Even though that _would_ almost certainly result in a real fight when the Aurors came to stop her— _No, bad idea_. Bella had _just_ reminded her that she wasn't _her_ — _she _might be able to pull something like that off, but if _Lyra_ picked a fight with _all the fucking Aurors_, she would die. And that would be bad. (_Yes, ducky, that would be _bad_. I do much prefer you alive._) "The D.L.E. doesn't think I did anything wrong."

"This is the same D.L.E. that leaves people on an island full of dementors as punishment for _reading books_, yes? Forgive me if I don't put much stock in their moral authority. Just because you're getting away with it doesn't make it better. It's the _principle_ of the thing, Lyra!"

Lyra turned to Blaise. "Am I missing something, here?"

He shrugged. "The inherent value of a human life?" He must have been able to read the unspoken _what inherent value_ in her face because he added, "I mean, even if the particular person means nothing to _you_, you'd admit there's some value in sacrificing them, so they must have some intangible value outside of your own regard for them."

Oh. That was...kind of a decent point, she supposed. Murder for the sake of killing would be kind of wasteful, in that light. "It's not like I was just killing them for fun, though."

"That's not the point!" Maïa snapped.

"Well what _is_, then?"

"You don't have the right to take another person's life," Gin said, out of nowhere. All four of them turned to stare at her. "It doesn't matter that they were _a clear and present danger_ — Bill and Charlie got letters from the D.L.E., too — by muggle standards, you overstepped by taking matters into your own hands instead of running away like a good, helpless little girl, because where would we be if everyone went around claiming the right to kill anyone who offended them, or broke social convention?" Lyra was pretty sure that was sarcasm because, Light as the Weasleys were, they'd also been involved in Dumbledore's little vigilante club back in the Seventies. "Also, muggles don't really consider it to be self-defense if you intentionally put yourself in a position where you need to defend yourself with lethal force."

Huh. Sounded like Gin was making even more progress with Riddle's memories than she'd thought. Picking out memories of events (like the odd vivisection) were one thing, but as she understood it, interpreting the memories of more intangible things like the actor's reactions or thoughts about events was _far_ more advanced. But she couldn't imagine where _else_ Gin would have picked up anything about muggle attitudes on...anything, really. Which was both good and bad. Good because it meant she could probably start questioning her about Young Not-Professor Riddle, but bad because it meant she was going to have to find something else for her to do. Planning and organising and delegating were _not_ things Lyra was good at.

She was, however, pretty good at ignoring problems that didn't require an immediate solution, and statements that were just plain _silly_. (Of _course_ it was still self-defense, no matter _how_ you got to the point of needing to defend yourself!) The other part, though, the sarcasm, which she presumed was meant to indicate that Maïa really thought something like that, _that_ required a response. "Er... You know that's basically how it works, though. Society. Magical British society, I mean. Fundamentally, under all the Ministry's regulations. You do whatever you can get away with doing, take on whatever responsibilities you like, and if you overstep someone will take on the responsibility of getting rid of _you_. And yes, that does lead to blood feuds on occasion, but that's why we have the Wizengamot — to negotiate or force a peace between families when they get too out of hand, and figure out how to deal with the big issues that affect all of us, like the Statute of Secrecy."

Maïa stared at her as though she'd completely lost the plot. Obviously further explanation was needed.

"Okay, take the riot, for example. The precedent for this sort of thing is that the D.L.E. determines whether each kill was legal, based on the circumstances in which it occurred. If not, you're tried by the Wizengamot for murder and punished accordingly. If it is, and the family of the dead person wants to make a thing out of it, they do it by demanding weregild or something along those lines — it's not always money, just, you know, some sort of restitution. House Wilkins actually did that last week, Sirius killed the brother of their head of house. If they can't settle it between themselves, they take the dispute between their families to the Wizengamot to arbitrate. Which we're almost certainly going to have to do, because Meda says it would set a bad precedent, letting another House hold the House of Black accountable for our actions, and while Siri would totally pay them off anyway behind her back because it's just _money_, he refuses to issue the public apology they want because he's not sorry. George Wilkins was using lethal spells trying to break through the palings between the Gaels and the rioters, he deserved what he got. I actually have a letter from Meda to give to Maeve to give to her father telling him exactly that, I should find her at some point..."

Maïa continued staring for several more seconds. "Oh. My. God. What is this, the fifth century? Every time I think Magical Britain can't get _more absurd_, I find out, oh, I don't know, I'm living in some feudal, clan-based society with a sense of justice based on who has the most money and social influence!"

Gin giggled. "You know, that was almost _exactly_ Tom's reaction, just with a _very_ different tone. You have to think of the _opportunities_, Hermione!"

"Maïa would be a _much_ better Dark Lord than Riddle was." Lyra was absolutely certain of that. As far as she could tell, all Riddle had really wanted was his autonomy — their own little European Miskatonic, so to speak — which was all well and good, but didn't really lend itself to a proper revolution. Maïa, on the other hand, would have all sorts of ideas about changing their society, which would either work and everything would be chaos as people adjusted to the new normal, or fail miserably and everything would be chaos as people tried to work out a _new_ new system in spite of her. So...like Lady Cromwell, but without the inane Christian stuff and the crazy racism.

(Eris giggled at the back of her mind. _Yes, well, I did tell you she had potential, didn't I?_)

(_...Noted._ She'd have to see what could be done about encouraging that potential then. Just...carefully. Given the way she was reacting to the comment, Lyra didn't quite think Maïa was ready to take that sort of idea very seriously.)

Blaise raised an eyebrow at her, but didn't say whatever he was thinking, and she couldn't possibly guess.

Maïa missed it, distracted as she was by going rather red at Gin and Lyra's comments. "I'm not going to become a— That's just ridiculous, and— _Hey_, you're trying to change the subject again!"

"No, _you_ keep trying to change the subject back to something we've already moved past! Conversations _drift_, it's what they _do_!"

Before Maïa could come up with some excuse for her hypocrisy, someone knocked softly on their compartment door. Lyra, who was closest to it, slid it open and grinned. "Good summer, Luna?"

Luna ignored her greeting — not entirely surprising, since she was under orders from her Patron not to interact with Lyra (_the Moon said we can't be friends_, honestly), lest she further corrupt the least innocent dedicate of Innocence she'd ever met. Not that she'd met any others, but Luna was still terribly suited to Gelach, they all knew it. "Theo," she said, peering around Lyra. "Can I...talk to you about...something? Privately."

"Um...sure? I think we're set, right, Gin?"

She nodded, tucking her calendar back into her bag. "I'll talk to Harry and Justin about our schedule and get back to you. Might be a week or two, we'll have to wait until the quidditch team sets their practice schedule for Harry."

Theo nodded, turning to the little blonde still hovering in the doorway, though Lyra had sat down again to let her come in. "Where did you want to...?"

Luna gave him a helpless shrug. There was something..._off_ about her, though Lyra couldn't quite put her finger on it. "Somewhere liminal. And private."

"Somewhere _liminal_?" Gin repeated. "Why?"

Probably something about re-dedicating herself to someone other than fucking Gelach, Lyra suspected. A goddess of innocent, ignorant potential would probably have trouble seeing shite that happened in the middle of a transitional period, after all. She bit her tongue to keep from saying so aloud, though, given the whole dedication being Unforgivable here _thing_.

"I can't tell you, Ginevra. Please...don't ask. I just need to talk to Theo. It's important."

"Er...yeah, okay..." Gin made a face at the little Ravenclaw, who still hadn't entered the compartment.

"Did you get turned by a vampire over the summer, Lovegood? Pretty sure _on the train_ is still liminal, even if you're not _directly in the doorway_."

Luna ignored that, too, though she did inch forward, leaning heavily on the doorframe as the train gave an unexpected lurch.

"Don't be an arse, Black," Gin snapped. Lyra opened her mouth to ask exactly what she'd done that could be construed as arse-like, but the redhead talked over her. "Come on guys, lets let Luna say whatever she needs to say. We can find somewhere else to be."

"Erm...yes, alright," Maïa agreed, giving Luna a look very similar to the one Gin was wearing. Clearly Lyra was missing something, here.

"Mmm, I did tell Daphne I'd come find her after the initial girly _oh, you changed your hair_, _have you heard this bit of salacious gossip I've just made up_, _my holiday was _way _more expensive than yours_ chatter died down."

"You _do_ realise not all girls carry on about shite like that," Maïa snapped, leading the way out into the corridor. Lyra thought this was obvious, given that _they_ hadn't been discussing any of those topics, and three of them were girls. (And one of them was _Blaise_ — he was arguably more feminine than Lyra herself in several ways, including their relative propensities for discussing their hair or gossip of any sort, salacious or not.)

Blaise smirked. "No, but Parkinson and Brown and those little bits of fluff that follow her around do, and Daph is obligated to make nice with the other spoilt little bitches, for the sake of appearances if nothing else. I probably should go rescue her, though. And didn't you tell Harry you'd catch up with him?"

"Well _yes_, but I expect they'll still be talking about the World Cup — the quidditch team is hiding him from his adoring fans," she explained to Lyra.

"Did he cancel the disguise charms?" Because so far as she knew, Harry had been planning to use the same glamours he'd worn at the World Cup to avoid all the attention at the train station.

"Malfoy outed him on the platform, little twat." Maïa scowled off into the middle distance at the absent twat in question.

"You'd think by this point he'd realise that he's only digging a deeper hole for himself."

"Yes, well, stunning as Tricia Mullet might be on a broom, the snake wants what the snake wants. And Harry's even _more_ distracting now that I'm snogging him. Driving Dear Draco up the nearest wall, really, and he has no idea why, it's bloody hilarious."

"_What_?"

Lyra could hear the laughter in Gin's voice as she explained. "Haven't you heard, Hermione? Harry's always distracting Malfoy's snake."

"Yes, well, fun as it is to discuss my favourite cousin's burning desire to hate-fuck Harry, I have to go find Maeve Wilkins before I forget again." A task made much more difficult by the fact that Lyra had only seen a picture of the fifth-year Hufflepuff — spying on people from the Shadows really only worked if she knew their magic well enough to identify them across the planar border. She was going to have to actually _look_ in _every single compartment_ on the bloody train. _Physically_.

_Lame_.

_Oh, you never know. _

_Oh? Is that a hint? What do you know?_

_That would be telling, ducky_. (Of course it would.) _I'm just saying, your shadow tricks are convenient, yes, but spending all your time out of the mortal plane _does _rather limit your opportunities to happen across potential points of interest._

_I don't spend _all _my time outside. _Only like...twenty percent of it. Maybe thirty, if she was feeling particularly antisocial (or the people around her were being particularly annoying, which mostly amounted to the same thing). Though perhaps she had been neglecting her duty to Eris, lately, avoiding most people she didn't already know. It was just, everyone seemed to rub her the wrong way, lately. Even the people she _did_ know — Harry was being all _nagging_, and Zee was just being patronising with her _oh, you're growing up so fast_ schtick. Most of the reason she was going to find Maeve now was that she really didn't want to stick around for Hermione to continue whinging about her participation in the riot.

_She's just concerned for you_, Eris said, slightly amused.

_Yeah, well, concern is annoying. Besides, what is she concerned about? I didn't tell her anything _really _bad._ ... At least, she didn't _think_ she had, she wasn't always clear on what counted as _really bad_. But she hadn't told Maïa anything Harry didn't know, anyway.

_You could have died, my little bellatrice. _

_I—_

_Yes, I know you didn't, but you _did _tell her that you were hit with the Cruciatus in the midst of the battle._

And Maïa had never seen Lyra deal with that particular curse. All she knew about it was shite she'd seen in books, which drastically overstated how debilitating it was. It _was_ excruciatingly painful (kind of the point, in the name and all), and kind of exhausting — every muscle tended to feel like she'd just run five miles after a few seconds — but she was still quite capable of fighting after she'd been released from it, and conscious enough that she was _pretty sure_ she could retreat into Shadow to break it if necessary. Lovegood had intervened just as she was gathering her focus to do so, so she hadn't tested that theory yet, but. Yes, it was possible that someone _else_ might have hit her with a lethal curse while she was under...

...or in the immediate aftermath — that she _couldn't_ keep her focus through. In her defence, she had much more experience dealing with excruciating pain than overwhelming pleasure...the solution to which seemed obvious now that she'd identified it as a problem (which it actually _was_, because most people might not think of it but some of those orgasm-inducing charms she'd found after Sirius mentioned they existed would be _dead_ easy to throw into an offensive chain) — clearly she needed to practise thinking while Sylvie was doing that thing with her tongue... But in any case, she would be willing to bet most people would rather see her in pain than dead. She was, as Mickey had so recently informed her, very easy to hate.

_Ugh, whatever. I'll talk to her about it later, I'm sure she'll bring it—_

"Hey! Watch where you're— Oh...hi."

Lyra blinked down at the child she had stumbled into as the train rounded an unexpected curve, and grinned. A first-year muggleborn girl — jeans and trainers peeking out from beneath her school robes and a muggle knapsack at her feet — with a piss-off attitude that positively _screamed_ potential. _Is this the one I was meant to be keeping an eye out for?_

_I didn't say you were looking for anyone in particular_. (Her amusement said it was.)

Well, she _had_ had a piss-off attitude — it had vanished abruptly halfway through her _watch where you're going_, as Lyra had caught her eye. Which was kind of... Oh, oops. She _had_ been on the verge of thinking it was a bit odd, that the girl had been so very distracted by simply looking at her — the Black look was striking, but not _that_ striking — but then she'd realised that her magic was kind of everywhere at the moment, which could...well, make it kind of hard to think, really. She'd only met a couple of sorcerers before she'd made her dedication, but she did recall that was a thing. She just didn't really think of it as a thing that applied _to her_, because, well, it was kind of like the shadow-kin thing — she wasn't quite used to the idea that she was suddenly channelling far more magic than the average mage simply by _existing_ in much the same way she wasn't quite used to the idea that she wasn't properly human by _any_ definition of the word, anymore.

_This must be how people who suddenly get taller feel_, she thought, even as she focused on reeling her aura back to her body. Except Bella was only about two inches taller than she was, so instead of getting all gangly and clumsy she was just...very obviously leaking dark magic all over the place. Kind of embarrassing, especially after Bella had _just_ made that point about her casting being _sloppy_ — which it _wasn't_, hers was just unnaturally tight — and also probably more than a bit suspicious. So...she should probably work on that. Which was— _Ugh_, it had taken _ages_ for her to get to the degree of reflexive control that Ciardha had insisted she master before he had agreed to take her anywhere interesting, and now she was going to have to start doing basic focusing exercises again, and focusing exercises were _so boring..._

"Hey," she said, grinning down at the kid. She wasn't actually that much shorter than Lyra, just kind of slouching as she leaned against the wall of the corridor, obviously waiting for the loo to free up. Her shoulder-length hair was a mousy brown, her eyes an indeterminate bluish-grey, and her features generally plain. She wasn't noticeably thin or heavyset, just... Lyra would be the first to admit she was a poor judge of these things, but as far as she could tell, the girl was the definition of _average_, at least physically. Magically...also fairly average, she thought, though probably unusually sensitive if she was _that_ overwhelmed by Lyra's presence, and with somewhat better control than she might have expected. There weren't a lot of muggleborns around to compare her to in this timeline, but those in her own first-year class hadn't been aware enough of their magic to keep it that contained for at least a couple of months. Probably meant she'd known about her own magic, at least, before school, had been semi-consciously practicing freeform effects. Between that and the attitude she'd had before getting all distracted by Lyra's magic getting away from her, she could see why Eris might think this one was potentially interesting. Or at least potentially useful.

If not particularly articulate. "Hi..." she said again, followed by, "um. I already...never mind. Were you waiting for...?" she gestured at the door to the loo.

"No." The loos on the train _were_ nice, for train loos, but the ones at home were nicer. "I'm Lyra Black. Call me Lyra. And you're _new_. Who are you?"

"Er...I'm..."

"Fae-struck?" Lyra suggested, pulling her magic back a bit further.

"What?"

"Ah...right, muggleborn. Idiom for when you were going to say something and then forgot what it was." Also, in this case almost literal, in the overwhelmed-by-magic sense. But the girl didn't need to know that. "Though I don't think fae can steal your name from you."

"Rachel. Campbell. Um...hi?"

"You can stop saying _hi_, now."

"Well, what else am I supposed to say? If you're not waiting for the toilet, don't let me hold you up." _There_ was that piss-off attitude again.

Lyra grinned. "Well, I suppose the usual thing in these circumstances is asking whether you know what House you want to end up in, though I also suppose that would be on me. So..." Rachel Campbell groaned, Lyra tried not to laugh too hard at her reaction. "How many people have already asked you that?"

"Twelve? Fifteen? I stopped counting. Whole thing's just... How'm I supposed to pick a House, when I've only known about magic for a month?"

"Well, you don't actually get to pick for yourself. Or, well, you kind of do, but the Hat helps, and makes the final call. Are you really telling me you didn't know you had power before McGee showed up on your doorstep being all _let me astound you with the wonders of Hogwarts and the hidden world of magic, behold my stunning ability to lick my own arse and hack up hairballs_?"

The muggleborn girl stared at her completely blankly for about two seconds before collapsing into hopeless laughter, literally doubling over before she managed to get control of herself again. "Sorry, sorry, it's just, she _did_, she _turned into a cat!_ I mean, does she do that every time she's telling someone about magic?"

Lyra shrugged. "Probably? I don't know, she's not nearly interesting enough to spend any significant amount of time spying on her. But since she did it with you as well and she's not what I'd consider _creative_ about..._anything_, I'm guessing probably."

"You, um...don't really seem to think very well of her. I take it she was just as patronising when she was telling _you_ about magic?"

Wait, what? Oh. Right. She was still wearing the muggle shorts and vest she'd taken to wearing over the summer, and the kid had probably been too fae-struck to put that first exchange in the proper context. "No, she didn't tell me— Honestly, I don't know if there was ever a time that I _didn't_ know about magic. I don't think I actually met a muggle until I was, I don't know, seven? eight? I didn't even think they were _real_ until I was about five. You know, just something in fae tales to scare the shite out of bad little witches, because _imagine having to live without magic_. I was _really_ confused in that first lesson about the Statute of Secrecy, let me tell you! And then it turned out the actual _scary_ thing wasn't the not having magic bit, it was the shite they manage to come up with without having magic. Like that nuclear bomb thing? And the fact that they actually _use_ them — I mean, there are _probably_ rituals that could kill an entire city, but they wouldn't be _condoned by the government of a world power_, that's the sort of shite that gets banned as Anathema over here. By which I mean the magical world on this side of the Atlantic, so I guess _maybe_ it makes sense, kind of, it _was_ an _American_ world power and Miskatonic is about the only place you _could_ talk about city-killing rituals, in a serious _let's do it just to see if we can_ sort of way." But that was straying into the territory of _things we don't talk about in public_, even if she was only talking to a first-year muggleborn who hadn't even been sorted yet, and didn't seem to be paying attention to what she was actually saying, anyway, just scowling down at her shoes, now. "Anyway, no, McGonagall didn't tell me about magic."

"Of _course_ she didn't," the kid muttered, mostly under her breath. "You're one of _them_."

"Them?"

"One of those magic-born _jerks_, like the ones I was sitting with earlier."

"Depends, who were you sitting with? Because while I may be both magically raised and a jerk, there are _vanishingly_ few students in this school who can claim to be much _like_ me in any significant way. Also, I don't think I've done anything particularly jerk-like to you yet? I mean, sure I was kind of ragging on Minnie a bit — McGonagall, that is — but you thought it was funny, so calling me a jerk for _that_ seems a bit hypocritical, doesn't it."

Rachel sighed, still pouting. "No, you're— Sorry. It's just, these two girls, Abbott and MacDougal, they're just first-years like me, but they kept going on about all the shite they already know about magic and the school, and being all, I don't know, condescending, about it all, like oh, you poor muggleborn, of _course_ you don't know anything, it's not your fault we're better than you and know all sorts of shite about school houses and where we're going to end up and how the Sorting works but we won't tell you because you're _muggleborn_. Racist _bitches_."

Ah, yes, Maïa had complained about that before too, to the tune that the kids from _light_ pureblood families, the ones who mostly ended up in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, could be worse to muggleborns than the Slytherins in some ways. More subtle and patronising about it — they didn't obviously _hate_ muggleborns, they just kind of thought of muggles as though they were children, and a bit slow, and whenever a muggleborn did halfway decently at anything they acted like it was a huge surprise because their expectations for anyone _raised by muggles_ — _i.e._, without the _tiny_ head-start that being raised by a light pureblood house might give them (from the point of view of someone with a Black education, they were _all_ pathetic) — were so _incredibly_ low.

"Oh, no. I'm not like them. I am to them what they are to you in a lot of ways, actually. They know a lot more about the fluffy, unimportant bits of culture than you do, like who Celestina Warbeck and Xeno Lovegood are, but I can pretty much guarantee they don't know much more than you about anything important like history or politics or, you know, _magic_. And what they _do_ know about magic is a bunch of lies told to children that only hurt them, give them misconceptions about how it all _works_ and false limitations to go along with." Lyra had noticed that muggleborns tended to be cleverer in their use of magic than the average mage, often making up for the power disadvantage they usually had, she assumed that was why. "The real question is, what do you want to do about it? Them being racist bitches, I mean."

"Er...what?"

"You know, what do you want to do to them because they're being racist bitches? Like, punch them in the face, or befriend them in spite of their prejudice and teach them the error of their ways, or just ignore them and do your own thing? I mean, you are kind of just lurking in the corridor — that loo _is_ open, isn't it? — so I'm kind of guessing you lean toward the last one, but I guess you could be trying to avoid punching them and getting detention before you even get Sorted, or planning your revenge or something. So. What do you want to do to them?"

The girl glared. "Is showing them up and rubbing their stupid faces in it an option?"

Lyra grinned, because _yes_, yes it was. It was, in fact, the _best_ option, because it was the _Slytherin_ option, and, well... There _had been_ muggleborn Slytherins in _her_ universe and time, but not here, and the Hat _had_ suggested that she couldn't completely fuck up that House from the outside — convincing a muggleborn to go there would _definitely_ upset the status quo. Plus she could make it known that the muggleborn Slytherin was under her protection, which would give her a _great_ excuse to pick fights with everyone she owed a bit of payback for that little spot of torture at the end of last term.

"Of course. And if you want my advice — which I'm sure you do, because you're a poor, ignorant muggleborn—" Rachel gave her an adorable furious glare. "—and more to the point, an unsorted firstie — if that's really what you want, you'll ask the Hat to put you in Slytherin."

"Wait, hat?"

"The Sorting Hat. The talking, mind-reading hat granted consciousness by one of history's greatest fools, Godric Gryffindor. Seriously, what kind of man invests a _hat_ with consciousness? Seems like torture, to me, being a sapient entity tied to an inanimate object for _literally centuries_, but, hey, whatever. Sorting Hat, honestly. You put it on, it tells you where you belong, taking into account your personality, the makeup of the various Houses at the moment and, if you could go to multiple Houses, your opinion on the matter. It also keys you into the school wards, and sings. Which also kind of seems like torture to me, it's completely tone-deaf, but no one asked _my_ opinion on the matter."

"We're sorted by a _magic hat_?!" the girl repeated, looking and sounding mildly outraged.

"Yep. Slytherin is the House that values ambition, among other things. Bettering yourself and your circumstances, broadly speaking — all the rest of the House traits go back to those, really. It's the House for kids who, when life gives them shite, turn around and tell life to suck it, they're going to succeed _in spite of_ whatever odds are against them. If you really want to become the best fucking witch you possibly can, because _fuck_ those racist bitches, that's where you belong. And if the stupid talking Hat says otherwise, tell it I'll set it on fire if it doesn't put you there. And so would Professor Riddle, and no one cares what Professor Snape thinks. The Snake Pit could use some new blood, and you're _just_ the person for the job."

The girl looked vaguely uncertain, as though she couldn't decide if that was meant to be a compliment or not (it was, sort of). "Er...thanks? I...maybe? I was kind of thinking that that sounded like the best fit, but... Well, Professor McGonagall kind of made it sound like that was like...where all the bullies and jerks ended up, really."

"Yeah, well, she's the Head of Gryffindor — rival Houses. And yes, there are a bunch of stuck-up idiots around who mistake having ambitions of excellence for actually being special, and more who think that the whole _Slytherins use any means_ thing means they're obliged to be selfish pricks, or think that the House reputation for cunning magically makes anyone who gets in cunning, which it really, _really_ doesn't. But there are bullies and jerks in all of the houses and, like, ninety-five per cent of all the people you'll ever meet are idiots of one stripe or another, so that really shouldn't matter. And if you want to make connections and actually integrate into our world, Slytherin really is the best option.

"Well, Hufflepuffs are good at networking, too, but the Hufflepuff option was to befriend the racist twats. Slytherin's more...competitive. New Hufflepuffs are accepted immediately, just because the Hat said you belong there. In Slytherin you have to fight to earn respect, _prove_ you belong there, but it means a whole lot more once you get it. If you can carve out a place for yourself in Slytherin, you'll almost certainly be able to handle yourself when you leave school, you know, trying to become a successful adult without a house supporting you, which is definitely _not_ something any of the others can say.

"It's probably easier to be a Hufflepuff, at least while you're in school, but _easy_ doesn't really prepare you for real life. Besides, it's not like I'd just tell you to jump into the Snake Pit and leave you to fend for yourself, I will look out for you if you end up there. Also, Slytherins get their own bedrooms, everyone else has to share with at least one roommate. Pretty sure that alone is worth any degree of shite from your housemates."

"Um...right. And who are you, exactly? 'Cause, I mean, no offense, but...you can't be that much older than I am."

"Lyra Black. Hogwarts Champion and fourth-year prefect. And also, today, a post owl." She plucked the letter she was meant to deliver to Maeve Wilkins from a shadow pocket with a grin, loosing her hold on her magic just a bit, to emphasise the importance of her next statement. "Think about it. Slytherin, I mean. And hopefully I'll see you in the Commons tonight." She did, after all, have detention. A detention which Severus almost certainly hadn't meant for her to sit _tonight_, but he could hardly complain about her doing _exactly_ as she was told — this _was_ the first night of term. (And he definitely deserved her interrupting his welcome speech and embarrassing him in front of his new snakelings for setting her a detention on the first night of term anyway, _especially_ because the only reason she'd been caught out of bounds was because she'd been tortured into unconsciousness, that was hardly _her_ fault.)

Before the girl could come up with a response — which might take a while, she was staring all fae-struck again, which probably meant Lyra had overdone it just a little — she twiddled her fingers at her and returned to the errand at hand, skipping down the corridor peering into each compartment in search of a certain fifth-year Hufflepuff, or anyone who might know where she'd squirrelled herself away, and trying to think of things to do after she found her.

Ooh! She could go find Sylvie! Explain the Very Serious Problem of not being able to concentrate while being distracted by overwhelming pleasure, and how Sylvie might be able to help her out with that...

* * *

Éanna Ó Caoimhe sat speechless, frozen with horror.

_Teach?_ Master Severus expected him to _teach_? Like..._other people?_

He should have listened to his dad, this was a _terrible_ idea...

The conversation had moved on some since that _terrible_ revelation, the adults in the room going back and forth on...something to do with projects for NEWT students, guessing from context. Éanna doubted he had much to contribute in any case. Unlike Master Severus's other two pseudo-apprentices — a sharp middle-aged witch named Laura and a blond man in his thirties named Rhys (Éanna was expected to use their first names, they were colleagues now) — he hadn't taken the exam yet.

And probably never would, honestly. Only people looking to get a job or into a Mastery program took the standard exams — even if Master Severus didn't take him up for a proper apprenticeship, his recommendation would probably go a long way to getting him into one with another alchemist. He _could_ take the exams, of course, he just didn't need to.

That, and the discussion was less about actual Potions theory — that, at least, he knew quite a bit about — and more about the practical considerations of _teaching_ actual Potions theory. Éanna knew _nothing_ about that. Mother save him, he'd never even _taken_ a class before! Well, no, that wasn't entirely true — he _had_ sat in on a few courses at the Academy over the years, but none of those had been in Potions. All of his Potions work had been from tutors or self-study, he'd never been in a single session of group instruction in Potions, not once, _ever_.

And Master Severus expected him to _teach_? Was he _mad?!_

Éanna focused on his breathing for a moment, trying to tamp down his rising panic — the others probably already weren't taking him seriously, going on and having an anxiety attack right in front of them over being expected to _teach_ would not help matters the slightest bit.

He cringed, nearly jumping out of his seat, at the sound of a chair sliding against the floor. (The sizzling pressure built low in his spine, crawling up, he let himself shiver to release it.) Apparently the meeting was over now — Laura and Rhys were getting to their feet, chatting on about preparing labs for the imminently arriving students. Oh, erm, was he expected to do anything in these last few hours before they came? He hadn't been paying attention. He _could_ ask, he guessed, though maybe once he had Master Severus alone, so he didn't look quite so—

His smooth, drawling voice pitched low, Master Severus said, "Stay behind for a moment, Éanna."

Oh. Well. Okay, then.

It was only a brief moment until they were alone, dragged out for a couple seconds when Laura hesitated at the door — Éanna could near feel her eyes on him, the back of his neck tingling. Out of concern of some kind, he would guess, which was more than a little unsettling. Laura was _trying_ to be nice, obviously, but he would rather she just left him alone. About personal things, he meant. Talking about potions and alchemy was fine, making it about squishy things was just uncomfortable.

(He never knew what to say when Laura tried to talk to him. He wished she would stop.)

Before too long, the door clicked closed, and they were alone. Master Severus remained silent a little longer, putting schedules and lesson plans back in their proper files; waiting, Éanna let his eyes wander, idly trailing over Master Severus's bookshelves. (He had a _lot_ of books in here, the shelves covering most of all three walls, it took some effort to stay sitting and not go poking about.) Finally, "If you don't mind my asking, Éanna, are you all right? You seem unsettled."

_Unsettled_, yes, that was a word for it, Éanna was _unsettled_. "When we were talking about me doing this, this stuff with the students, I thought it would mostly be grading potions and, and marking essays, you know, that sort of thing."

"There will be more than enough of _that sort of thing_ to go around, I assure you."

"I know, but." There was a brief stinging on his thumb — Éanna hissed, consciously placed his hands on his knees. (He'd been trying to stop picking at his own knuckles for a while now, but it was _hard_.) With his hands where they were now, he could feel his left heel was bouncing, he hadn't even noticed he was doing that. "You're really going to have me, me– You want me _teaching_? Like, in a classroom with people in it?"

In his peripheral vision, Éanna noticed Master Severus's face shift. (A smile? No, probably a smirk.) "One typically finds more success at teaching when there are people present, yes." ...Was that sarcasm? Éanna was pretty sure that was sarcasm. Of course, it was also true — obviously, just talking at an empty room wouldn't be proper teaching, would it — but that was a thing people did sometimes, saying a true thing mockingly...which, Éanna was pretty sure that _wasn't_ sarcasm, but people _called_ it sarcasm, even though—

Never mind that now, focus, Éanna. "Do I have to? I mean, I don't think that's a very good idea."

"Why not?"

...Okay, Éanna had to come up with _reasons_ now. He hadn't prepared for talking about it, he'd thought it was just...kind of obvious, really. "Um, I'm only fifteen, which is younger than a lot of the students, and, and, you know, I've _literally_ never been in a Potions class before..." Like, forget taking a course, he'd never been in _a room Potions was taught in_...

"Though you will assist in labs up to the OWL level, your lectures are mostly scheduled for the second- and third-year classes. You will not be as much older than your students as they are accustomed to, but you will not be younger."

Fair. Sort of. Éanna's heel was bouncing higher, his spine tingling, it was starting to get hard to hold in the urge to move. "Okay, but about the literally never having been in a Potions class thing, though."

"It's not particularly complicated. With your experience in this area, I wouldn't expect you to plan the lessons yourself. You will be provided a potion or a topic, a brief list of points that must be addressed — how you go about addressing them is up to you."

"But how do you do that, though?"

"I don't doubt you know the material, Éanna. You will be communicating the same information you learned from tutors or books — there is not so great a leap between these media as you might expect. Laura or myself will be present for all of your classes, at least at first, to assist if you miss anything important, or are otherwise struggling. But I am confident you will perform adequately."

How nice for him. Éanna wasn't confident of that, he wasn't confident of that at all. "So this, this, this teaching thing, it's not negotiable."

"No."

Shite. He'd been worried about that.

The urge to move became too much, practically vibrating in place, so Éanna sprang up to his feet, circled around his chair to start pacing down the middle of Master Severus's office. (He'd learned a long time ago that people thought it was _very_ weird when he moved too much while sitting down, but pacing was a _relatively_ normal thing to do.) Of course, now his fingers were free to pick at his knuckles, he folded his arms behind his back, gripping his wrists. Which instantly had his shoulders crawling, because now his arms were being held from moving, but there wasn't a whole lot he could do about that if he didn't want to have to dissolve the scraggly calluses off the joints of his fingers again, that hadn't been fun.

Of course, pacing was also a very good excuse to not look at someone while talking to them. Maybe not a _very good_ one, he guessed, but certainly a better one than _it feels weird_. So, directed more at the walls around him as he walked a straight line parallel to the desk, Éanna said, "This, this, this me teaching thing, this is a bad idea, Master Severus. I don't think you understand how much it— This is a bad idea."

"I do understand. Unfortunately, developing some familiarity with organising your thoughts in a fashion to be addressed verbally will be necessary."

Éanna jerked to a stop, turned to frown at the wall behind and a couple inches above Master Severus's head. "Why?"

That was definitely an uncomfortable-type expression. Annoyed, maybe? Disdainful? (The bloody things looked so similar sometimes, he didn't understand how normal people managed it.) "The licensing boards in this country are somewhat behind the times when it comes to..." Master Severus paused, just for a moment, doing that thing people did when they weren't sure how to put something inoffensively (not that Éanna was really ever offended by anything). "...accommodating the needs of all potential applicants."

It took him a second to figure out what he was trying to say. "You mean they don't know how to deal with spastics."

"You have autism, not palsy."

Éanna had no idea what that was. Must be a muggle thing, Master Severus pulled muggle words out of nowhere all the time. It was very confusing.

"You are very talented, Éanna. I have no doubt that the day will soon come when you will submit a mastery project for consideration by an alchemy licensing board. And, when that day comes, you will need to defend the merits of your project, and your own virtues as an alchemist, to other experts in the field. In person, face to face. If you cannot coherently communicate the concepts of elementary potions to students with no incentive to challenge you, how can you expect to speak of your own original work in mastery-level alchemy to professionals with legitimate cause to do so?"

...Oh. That was actually a good point.

Shite.

"I... I don't know if I can do this, Master Severus." He didn't know, maybe, maybe Dad was right, and this whole thing was just a terrible idea. He'd been against Éanna sending letters out to master alchemists in the first place, said it wouldn't go as smoothly as Éanna thought. That he didn't have to put himself through this — give it a few years, and they'd find someone who'd agree to take him on. It wouldn't be particularly difficult, given the resources of their family — the founder of their clan was famous in part for _founding a school_, a school that continued operating to this day, there simply wasn't any academic field they _didn't_ have a litany of connections in — they could find something more his speed when he was ready, there was no reason to rush into things.

But, when he'd heard about Master Severus taking applications to assist him at Hogwarts in exchange for his tutelage, Éanna hadn't been able to help himself. He'd already been considering writing a few master alchemists, but that had been the last kick in the pants — this _was_ the youngest master alchemist in the modern history of the country they were talking about, and Éanna _was_ looking to beat his record, it only made sense. True, it wasn't a real apprenticeship, but in their previous discussions Master Severus said he'd be willing to offer plenty of guidance on that, in what free time they would have over the next months, and he'd even left the door open to a _real_ apprenticeship further along. He hadn't explicitly said as much, but it had been obvious enough for _Éanna_ to pick up on it, which could only mean he'd intended for it to be obvious. (Éanna was infamously oblivious, his cousins teased him for it constantly...or so he was told, he rarely noticed, because oblivious.)

Éanna had made it _very_ clear, during the interviews and stuff, that he was _not_ very good at the whole...dealing with people...thing. He wouldn't think he should have _needed_ to say that, it should have been more than obvious enough just talking to him. Master Severus had made noises about that being fine, that he understood perfectly, that that was fine, that he was more than willing to work around Éanna's quirks, that was fine.

Well, clearly that had been a big stinking _lie_, because now Master Severus expected him to _teach_!

And Éanna would be _very_ annoyed if Master Severus didn't have a bloody good point about it. Honestly, somehow, over these last couple years, it hadn't even _occurred_ to him that he'd have to speak with the licensing board. In person, with words coming out of his mouth. And those words would have to be convincing enough for the masters evaluating him to accept that he knew what he was talking about, despite his age and general strangeness. That he would never be taken seriously at this whole alchemy thing if he couldn't figure out how to _talk at people about alchemy_.

Suddenly, Dad's reluctance about letting Éanna throw himself into this stuff sounded a whole lot more reasonable.

Master Severus started speaking into Éanna's horrified silence — he was pretty sure he hadn't missed anything. "There are any number of resources you will be able to exploit here at the castle. Not only have the three of us decades of teaching experience between us, but..._some_ of my colleagues here are competent, and they'll have their own assistants coming in this year. If you can find a moment with them — they'll both be very busy expect — I would recommend speaking with Ashe or Filius." Professors of Runes and Charms, he knew, Éanna had met them briefly. (Though he'd heard of both before, of course — the latter had been a rather famous professional duelist in his time and the former was a foremost innovator in modular logic enchanting, fascinating work.) "You might find Septima's—" Arithmancy, her work was _very_ abstract and theoretical, Éanna could barely parse it. "—particular lecture style attractive. If you require advice on more...peripheral concerns, I'm certain Cassie will leave her door open to you."

He didn't know that one. "Cassie?"

"Castalia Lovegood. She's teaching Defence this year."

Ah. Right. Now that he thought about it, Éanna was pretty sure she'd said he could call her _Cassie_, the one time they'd met so far — just, he'd barely been able to hear her over her magic. Cassie's magic was...very, _very_ loud. He didn't mean loud in a _bad_ way, it was sort of nice, actually, all warm and soft and pleasant. Strongly reminded him of his great-grandmother, which was _strange_, because she'd been First Priestess of the Mother, and Éanna was _pretty sure_ someone would have mentioned Cassie Lovegood being a white mage...

Or, maybe not, because the Brits had made it illegal, the old ways had been driven underground even in Éire... Eh, oh well.

The conversation wrapped up quickly after that, Master Severus saying there really wasn't choice in the matter, he'd have whatever help he needed. Éanna was really only half-listening, which..._probably_ wasn't a good thing, but he was trying to remember when and why exactly the whole high magic being illegal thing happened.

Though, apparently he wasn't quite done giving Éanna an anxiety attack. Instead of dismissing him to prepare for the arrival of the students, Master Severus reached into a folder. He pulled out a photograph of a black-haired girl — cut from the _Herald_, looked like — and demanded of Éanna one more duty. Master Severus, with a completely straight face, as though unaware of the absurdity of his request, ordered Éanna to, by any means necessary, befriend Lyra Black and report to him on her activities.

Éanna couldn't even find the words to protest. He was completely fucked.

፠

Éanna was starting to think the thing Slytherins were _really_ Sorted for was a predilection toward dramatics.

He couldn't say he really understood this Sorting thing. He'd met Hogwarts alumni before, of course, so he'd heard all about their houses and whatnot, but he'd always found it just...kind of silly? To be all concerned over a personality test they were given when they were eleven, he meant. And he wasn't sure he understood how the houses were supposed to be _that_ different. Looking at it from different angles, the _only_ pairing he couldn't see were virtually identical were Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw — take any other pair, and there was a way to frame their "virtues" that just sounded like different ways of saying the same thing.

But that didn't mean he'd noticed _no_ commonalities between people sharing one of these silly school houses. The ex-Slytherins, they seemed to be...well, dramatic. Not always in the...solemn, super-formal, overly-serious kind of way — though a lot of them were like that all the time, Master Severus himself was a good example of the dignified sort of Slytherin-ness. But Slytherins could be silly too, but even when they did, it was overdone, and...colourful. As though they were performing their silliness for an audience, or had some paragon of silliness in their head they were seeking to live up to. They were very strange people.

(Though, of the Hogwarts graduates Éanna had known, he usually preferred the former Slytherins. For all their theatrics, they tended to be reasonable, rational people, less unpredictable.)

The dormitory was very much a continuation of this. Squirreled deep under the castle, the common room was filled with comfortable-looking furniture in muted colours arranged in subtle, strategic angles, the few hearths and many silvery lanterns spilling light across chairs and sofas and pillars and sconces to throw shallow, criss-crossing shadows over everything, granting the room a confusingly inconsistent, but very _dramatic_, sense of contrast. And then, of course, there was _a bloody lake_ outside the huge, wall-sized window at the opposite end, which was...

Okay, how was that even there? They hadn't walked _nearly_ far enough for the lake to be there, in any direction. There must be quite a bit of space-manipulation worked into the wards. Which, yes, _obviously_, Éanna had known that already, but _he'd_ been under the impression that a closed system could compress _or_ expand, _but not both_ — the dungeons definitely had some compression and warping going on, but to be under the lake now meant some hallway or staircase _somewhere_ had been _expanded out and down_, which...

These last days he'd spent at Hogwarts, Éanna would occasionally recall that Slytherin and Ravenclaw had been peerless wardcrafters in their time. The place bled talent from its every inch, to those who knew how to see.

(Of course, there was also the fact that he was pretty sure the _castle itself had a soul_, but he was trying to not consider the implications of that.)

And Master Severus was, as Éanna had learned, one of those dramatically serious types. After the feast, he'd met the new first years in the common room, to welcome them to Slytherin and give them a very serious, very dramatic speech as to the rules he expected them to obey. Éanna had been introduced with his other assistants — after the first years were made to introduce themselves, before he named the prefects — which had started a minor storm of whispering, as the gathered students realised that, not only was he not so much older than them and a _Gaelic commonor_ (the horror) who hadn't even had the decency to be in Slytherin, but he had the absolute, unmitigated gall to not even have attended Hogwarts at all!

Mother save him, this was a _terrible_ idea...

Master Severus managed to flatten the kids' protests quickly enough — mostly with Éanna's clanname, which was irritating, and with assurances that he was a mastery alchemy student, which wasn't strictly accurate but fine — moving on with his interminable (and _dramatic_) monologue. Honestly, did Master Severus think they were in a spy film or something? When the First Rule of Slytherin House (_What Happens in Slytherin Stays in Slytherin_) was followed by the Second Rule of Slytherin House (_Don't Get Caught_), Éanna barely managed to hold in the wholly inappropriate urge to laugh.

He knew everyone else in the room was being so _very serious_ about this, but really, he kept flipping between dumbfounded disbelief and childish giggles. Hogwarts was such a silly place, he couldn't help it.

It abruptly became a whole lot less funny when the Watcher Herself appeared in the middle of the room, interrupting Master Severus with Her very presence.

At least, that was what Éanna had thought for one mad, horrible moment. He'd been this close to the Morrígan exactly once — an experience he was not likely to forget, or ever wish to repeat — and for a single instant he was there again, eight years old and confused and terrified.

But no, he realised quickly, this wasn't the Watcher, just a mortal witch. A very dark, very _powerful_ mortal witch. Her aura wasn't nearly so overwhelming as the Watcher's, though still feeling wildly out of proportion with her appearance — the little, black-haired girl at its heart hardly looked to be twelve, it wasn't at all impossible for a human but in one so young? And the music of her magic felt dark and bloody, but not in the same way. The Watcher, much like the Mother, was a protector, but one more vengeful, vicious and proud and furious and _absolutely deadly_. Like a dragon attacking an enemy — it might be doing you a favour at the moment, but maybe don't go poking too hard if you like not being on fire.

This girl, no, she wasn't _quite_ like the Morrígan, the feel to her something more...playful? There was an edge of violence on the air, yes, but not the same kind of... Éanna would almost think one of the fae had suddenly decided to pop into the middle of the Slytherin common room, if that weren't entirely absurd. Or, maybe not as absurd as it _should_ be, since their Professor of Divination for the year was _apparently_ a bloody peri, but... A dark priestess was more likely than fae. Probably a trickster god, he thought, that would explain the feel of her magic. So, not his problem, just endeavour to be boring and he'd be fine. (People did tend to find Éanna strange or boring or both, so that shouldn't be a problem.)

Belatedly, as cold reason ate away at the last shreds of instinctive panic, Éanna recognised her. That was Lyra Black. The noble girl Master Severus had ordered him to befriend was _obscenely_ powerful, and _maybe_ priestess to a trickster god.

He was so fucked. Hogwarts was going to drive him insane, he just knew it, bad idea, bad bad bad _bad_...

"Good evening, Your Honour," Black said into the uneasy silence her sudden appearance had caused. Though it was loosening now, people remembering to breathe again now that the sense of her magic on the air quickly faded away — she must have lost control of it temporarily while doing...whatever it was she'd done to appear here. (She certainly hadn't come through the door...) She skipped nearer, as light and cheerful as a child at play, plopping down to a seat on a sofa next to a first-year girl. (None of the other first years had joined her, instead shooting her dark, scathing looks. Muggleborn, maybe? Éanna recalled the British nobility could be odd about that.) "Sorry I'm late, had to talk to our esteemed Deputy Headmistress after dinner. Carry on."

Master Severus, with exhausted exasperation even Éanna hadn't managed to get from him yet, drawled, "Why are you here, Black?"

"I was assigned a detention, Your Honour. Did I miss introductions?"

Oh, Éanna had seen Master Severus do this before — head bowed slightly, hair coming forward to partially hide his face, one hand pinching at the bridge of his nose. The Chief Warlock (er, Headmaster) had interrupted one of his meetings with Éanna and Laura and Rhys to ramble off about confusing nonsense. Apparently, Master Severus found Dumbledore and Black to be similar degrees of annoying. "Your detention is scheduled for _tomorrow_ evening. I trust you can see yourself out."

"You said the first night of term. This is the first night of term." Her tone sounded very much like Éanna's cousins when lying about doing something they weren't supposed to be doing. Crossing her arms, slouching back into the sofa, "Also, I'm already here."

"In that case, you may have _another_ detention tomorrow evening — insubordination."

Apparently, Master Severus's flat, cold, _I am very unimpressed with you_ tone had absolutely no effect at all on the mad girl — which Éanna didn't understand, every time he heard it it sent goosebumps up his arms, even if it wasn't directed at him. (He'd been perfectly decent to Éanna so far, but he never forgot that Master Severus was _not_ a nice person.) In fact, she _giggled_, light and girlish. "Are you sure you can give detentions for insubordination? I mean, you'd think I would have gotten one before _now_ if they were actually a thing. Also, if you keep giving me frivolous detentions, I'm going to start thinking you enjoy my company. And, you know, I am a girl of a certain age, I'd think you'd want to be careful about what that might look like to people who don't understand this beautiful friendship of ours. But sure, whatever."

Master Severus was actually _shocked into silence_. Éanna couldn't see his face from this angle — not that he was great at reading facial expressions anyway — but the way he went all stiff, making no more sound than a quiet, sharp hiss, how he just _stared_ at Black for long seconds— That _had_ to be what that was. As mad as she _definitely_ was, Éanna was impressed — he hadn't realised shaking Master Severus was even _possible_, what with the mind magic and all.

It'd hit him so badly, apparently, that he didn't even bother responding, just went right back to explaining the rules of Slytherin as though they'd never been interrupted, and the last minute hadn't happened.

"You're letting her stay?" That was one of the prefects, er... Shite, Éanna had forgotten his name. He was terrible with names, especially British names, ech. "But she's a Gryffindor!"

Black spoke before Master Severus could press on. "I've been exiled for un-Gryffindor-like behaviour. Apparently letting people draw false assumptions about the vitality or lack thereof of a certain person who shall remain unnamed is _dishonourable_. Who would have guessed?"

Was that... She was talking about that business with Harry Potter maybe being dead, right? Éanna never picked up on the news of the day — he'd rather focus on his studies, and most of it was just bloody stupid anyway — but people had been talking about that enough even he'd picked up on it. He'd been under the impression it'd all been a misunderstanding, but that _sounded_ like Black had lead people to believe _Harry Potter was dead_ on purpose.

Not that Éanna actually _cared_, of course, it was just another reason this girl was _completely terrifying_, and Master Severus expected him to _talk_ to her, Mother save him, he was so fucked...

While everyone else in the room was processing the implications of that, the girl next to Black leaned in to whisper something at her. Black answered, not bothering to keep her voice down — and also losing her hold on her magic again, the room going all cold and dark and _scary_, Éanna's skin crawled so hard he shivered, tried not to fidget too obviously. "When I was Sorted, the Hat implied that I couldn't completely fuck up Slytherin House from the outside. Figured I should do something about that this year. Also, it gives me an excuse to pick fights with all the pureblood twats who have a problem with you being here.

"This one is _mine_," Black said, turning to pin the prefects with a (terrifying) grin. "Do the twats a favour and make sure they know? Thanks."

Éanna had absolutely no idea who the "twats" in question were, but they'd have to be complete fucking idiots to do anything to that girl now. This pureblood supremacy shite was nonsense to begin with — at least, that was the assumption Éanna was working on here, it was possible it was something else he wasn't picking up on — but it _certainly_ wasn't worth the risk of attracting the attention of a priestess of a dark trickster god. Just killing themselves would be quicker, and probably much less confusing.

...Assuming people _knew_ what Black was, which he kind of doubted they did. Éanna had been reminded earlier today that high magic was technically illegal, and if it were common knowledge that Lyra Black was a priestess someone probably would have mentioned it. So they wouldn't even see it coming, then. Perfect.

Éanna hoped his duty to befriend this girl wouldn't include hiding the bodies. He didn't like blood, okay...

"Er, who are you, though?" one of the boys asked.

Black turned him an unimpressed look — even in his peripheral vision, it looked very much like Master Severus's, Éanna wondered if she'd copied it from him. "You look like a Rosier, but you can't guess? I'm hurt, Cousin. Lyra Black, Hogwarts Champion and fourth-year prefect." Éanna hadn't known there were fourth year prefects...

Master Severus drew attention back to him with a harsh scoff. "The Hogwarts Champion is yet to be chosen, and there are no fourth-year prefects." Oh, Black was being ridiculous, okay. "Even if there were, no one in their right mind would give _her_ the job. Miss Black is...my _paramenon_."

That didn't help this make any more sense to Éanna. He had no idea what that was (besides Greek...probably).

"_Paraménousa_." (Right, definitely Greek, though he still didn't know what it meant.) "Also, no one in their right mind would make _you_ a _custos_, Your Honour. And that would imply you had some way to—"

"Keep talking and I'll set you a detention teaching the first-years how to mince flobberworms."

That, apparently, was enough of a threat to get Black to shut up. Her unnerving grin vanished (along with her magic, thankfully), and she sat back on the sofa, quietly letting Master Severus continue through his speech. Well, not _entirely_ quietly — she did make little interjections now and again, but they were short and didn't merit a response from anyone in the room, they were apparently ignoring her now. They didn't get off track again until they were starting in on a stern (dramatic) lecture about something called the Truce.

Which was somewhat irritating, because Éanna hadn't any idea whatsoever what the Truce _was_. It'd been mentioned a couple times by noble kids he'd met before, and once or twice since arriving at Hogwarts, but nobody had actually explained it before. He'd been operating under the assumption that, since he didn't know what it was, the terms of this Truce thing didn't apply to him. Probably.

It was still a good idea to know what it _was_, just in case, but Black interrupted almost immediately. "Oh, we're still doing that, then?"

"Of course we're _still doing that_, Black," one of the prefects snapped. "Why wouldn't we—?"

"Well, there was that whole riot thing a couple weeks ago and, you know, Bellatrix no longer being in Azkaban. Just, I've been in the States all summer, thought I'd check."

Oh! Sounded like the Truce was related to that whole thing they'd had with that Dark Lord and his followers, and their little miniature civil war, the British nobility killing muggleborns and/or each other. Right, yeah, that _didn't_ apply to him, okay.

The (probably) muggleborn girl next to Black asked, "Who?" then glanced around the room at the silent, incredulous stares she was getting. Which, Éanna could understand that a little bit — he knew practically nobody, and even he'd heard of Lady Blackheart before — but they couldn't well expect a muggleborn (probably) to know about her, could they? That was just unreasonable.

Black got to explaining first. Which, probably anybody else might have been better. "Infamous war criminal, convicted mass murderer, and _de facto_ Dark Lady. Also my mother, according to some rumours, which of course I can neither confirm nor deny." Black said that like it was a joke, but Éanna wasn't sure what was _funny_ about the suggestion the Blackheart was her—

No, actually, that was bloody hilarious, but the kind of funny Éanna assumed normal people didn't get and he tried not to admit to finding funny aloud. Still.

While Éanna was distracted with wondering whether that was _supposed_ to be funny or not, one of the first-year boys started saying something about the Blackheart having been on the side that killed people like the (probably) muggleborn girl...in a taunting way, as though he didn't at all disapprove of that genocidal nonsense, and wanted her to be very aware of that. (Éanna didn't get people.) But before he could get it all the way out, Black silenced him — wordlessly, because of course she did. "Watch yourself, Avery. Apparently the Truce is still a thing."

While the Slytherins muttered darkly, Master Severus broke the silencing — without even drawing his wand, he just snapped his fingers, a pulse of magic rushing from him in a tingling wave. (Éanna had already seen Master Severus casually whip out wandless magic a handful of times before, he was _very_ impressive.) "Five points from Gryffindor, Black. And that's Rowle."

"Whatever, Your Honour. And hey, I could make prefect! It's not out of the question, Slughorn even picked Bella."

"I'm fairly certain that Bellatrix never broke into Slughorn's rooms to threaten him in the middle of the night."

For a moment, Éanna wondered why the fuck Black was running around _threatening_ McGonagall, but then he remembered what McGonagall was like — Black had surely met her, and that was almost reason enough, she was _very_ irritating. (Just because _Éanna_ wouldn't do things like breaking into people's rooms in the middle of the night to threaten them didn't mean he couldn't understand why someone might want to.) Also, there was the priestess thing. Service to a trickster god probably demanded fucking with irritating people, seemed like the sort of thing they'd be into.

Éanna was distracted for a moment thinking about what he might do to mess with irritating people, if he had the wherewithal to do that sort of thing. When he checked back in, Master Severus was saying, "...the practice of the Dark Arts is forbidden at Hogwarts, though the Second Rule always applies. If you require further clarification of what is considered a Dark Art, I recommend you talk to your sixth-year prefects. Black and White Arts are both forbidden _and_ prevented by the—"

"_What?_" That wasn't _supposed_ to be out loud — Éanna hadn't even noticed he'd said anything until half the room turned to stare at him. His eyes drifting up toward the ceiling, trying not to fidget, he said, "Er, I mean, do you mean like, like _any_ high magic? Because, I'm supposed to, every dawn— I've _always_ done that, I don't know, don't know if I can _not_." He'd done it this morning, in fact, so he already knew the wards didn't block high magic. The suggestion they did was quite silly, Éanna doubted that was even possible.

(Honestly, _they were gods_ — they probably saw human warding to be vaguely adorable, like children at play.)

It didn't quite click that he'd essentially just admitted to committing Azkaban-worthy offences every bloody day since he was old enough to light a candle by himself until he registered the dead silence in the room and the dumbfounded eyebrow Master Severus was raising at him. Oops?

Eventually, his voice absolutely blank and even, Master Severus said, "Any minor religious observations routinely practised by certain segments of our society should be of no concern — it is only the greater workings, powerful rituals with significant external effects, that are likely to draw attention." Master Severus turned back to the rest of the room. "There is only one relevant exception: students and staff who wish to do so are permitted to celebrate the major Sabbats on—"

"Oh, well, now that we have your _permission_," the Black girl drawled, scorn so heavy on her voice it was perfectly obvious even to Éanna. "And the wards don't _prevent_ the use of— Brigit?"

It took Éanna a moment to realise Black was asking him a question. "Oh! Er. Yes, it's Bríd, but yes." Technically, it was _also_ very rude to just go baldly spitting out Her name like that, almost as rude as pronouncing Her name _wrong_ — Black was using an older version, but she hadn't said it right — but Éanna wasn't offended, didn't seem worth it to say anything.

A peculiar hush fell over the room, but Master Severus addressed it before Éanna could even think to ask what that was about. "No, Mister Éanna did not just publicly admit to being a white mage. Certain families among the Gaels still practise a somewhat modernised form of their ancient religion. The rite Mister Éanna is referring to is a ritual prayer to greet the new day — it's commonplace in Ireland and perfectly legal, though not the sort of thing they often speak of with outsiders."

Oh, he hadn't even realised that was an exception to their silly laws against high magic, okay. Of course, the _priests_ of Bríd (and Lú and Morrígan) were all what they would call white (or black) mages, but Éanna wasn't likely to tell a bunch of Brits that, was he.

Black shrugged. "Right, but, as I was saying, the wards don't _prevent_ ritual magic, they'll just light up like a bloody Christmas tree if you do anything too big. Er, if it's a _black_ ritual, anyway — I honestly don't know if they'll react to White Arts at all, so even if Éanna were a white mage he might be fine. But anyway, it's the strength of the magic that's the thing, so you could probably invoke Hecate inside the old dueling ring and no one would notice, the Holston variation on that thing is fucking impressive."

Master Severus went very still again. He must be glaring at Black too — she didn't react, but the (probable) muggleborn next to her leaned away, as though to escape an incoming curse. "And you would know this _how_?"

And Black _rolled her eyes_, because she was _completely insane_. "I wasn't even in the castle for Yule, you know. I wanted to see if I could practise any decent dueling spells, obviously. Illusions are really kind of useless if you're not facing an equally useless idiot like Darling Draco."

By how the prefects reacted to that, Éanna was positive there was a joke he wasn't in on. Again.

Master Severus's _very dramatic_ recitation of the rules of the house was apparently mostly over by this point. There were a couple more minor points he got into after that — mostly stuff about when and how to contact him or the prefects, the procedure to bring forward a grievance against another Slytherin for arbitration, blah blah. Then there was a quiz of sorts, asking after the rules, throwing question after question at the first-years, going around seemingly at random until someone got the particular point correct. (Not that it took more than one attempt very many times, Master Severus was the kind of person it was very difficult to not pay attention to.) Finally, with a last (dramatic) drawl that basically amounted to an order to _behave_ — most of the rules could be boiled down to that, really — Master Severus turned in a flicker of robes, and fled toward his office.

Éanna was right on his heels, stepping through the door out of the common room a bare second behind him. Once the door was closed, he said, "You can't be serious. About the Black girl, and, and the talking to— You can't be serious."

Momentarily paused in the middle of his office, Master Severus turned to give him that droll little raised eyebrow of his. (Éanna thought so, at least, he was too uncomfortable to look very closely, eyes dancing over the bookshelves instead.) "I'm quite serious, Éanna."

"But she's a _dark priestess_, though!" It occurred to him the second after he said it that he probably shouldn't have outed a 'black mage', since the British were silly about that sort of thing...but Master Severus was probably fine. If nothing else, if Master Severus tried to turn her in to the 'proper' authorities, Black's god wouldn't be very happy with him, that was probably enough for him to keep it to himself. "You expect me to talk to a priestess of a, a trickster god of some kind?"

"Noticed that, did you?" Master Severus, the arse, almost sounded amused. (And Éanna hadn't outed Black, he was obviously unsurprised.) "Eris is not precisely a trickster god, though I suppose the term is close enough to be getting on with."

That was probably meant to be informative but, while Éanna of course recognised the name from Classical Greek literature, he knew absolutely nothing about what the actual goddess was like in the modern day — he was only passingly familiar with gods recognised beyond Éire, or really any besides the Mother — so it made no real difference at all. Shuffling in place while Master Severus poked about his desk, he muttered, "You shouldn't speak her name."

"It is superstition that speaking the name of a god attracts their attention." It was most certainly _not_ just superstition, especially when it was a mage as powerful as Master Severus in a place of powerful magic like Hogwarts, but Éanna wasn't going to argue about it. "Black's connection to Eris is, in fact, a significant part of the reason why I wish you to keep an eye on her. It would be nice to have some forewarning of what trouble she's whipping up."

Éanna glared up at the ceiling. "There's nothing I can say to get you to change your mind, is there."

"No, there is not." Master Severus, the arse, almost sounded amused again.

He groaned, rubbing his face with both hands. Mother save him, he was so totally, thoroughly fucked...

* * *

"It occurs to me, Harry...Mister Potter, that I may have done you — and indeed our entire world — a disservice, in not inviting you to have this conversation at some earlier juncture."

Harry squirmed uncomfortably in the squashy armchair Dumbledore had offered him for this very ominous (and apparently overdue) conversation, whatever it might be about. He was beginning to regret telling Lyra and Hermione that he didn't want or need either of them to accompany him. The Headmaster's note, delivered to him in the same mysterious manner used to fill the serving dishes at the Feast, hadn't said that he _had_ to come alone, and Lyra _had_ offered (though she'd admitted she only wanted to come to avoid the meeting McGonagall had demanded with _her_), but Dumbledore was probably still pretty angry at both of them, Harry figured. Besides he'd thought it would look more...confident, he supposed, to come alone. He wasn't afraid that Dumbledore was going to _do_ anything to him — he couldn't even imagine what he might try to do — it was just silly to think that he might try to compel or obliviate him. Dumbledore, for all he might not be a particularly good man (a position Harry had only come around to in the wake of his attempt to drag him back to the Dursleys at the World Cup), didn't really seem the type to actually _hurt _him in some way.

His _intentions_ weren't bad, he was just...

Well, naive, basically.

Harry and Sirius had had a very long talk, the night after the World Cup, back in California. Sirius had given him a (very small) glass of firewhisky and they'd sat by a fire (much as he and Dumbledore were now, actually, but on a beach, lounging on damp sand under a cloudy sky), and they'd talked about Harry's parents and what they would have wanted for him, and why Dumbledore seemingly couldn't understand that the Dursleys were terrible people Harry wanted nothing to do with and that feeling was _completely_ mutual. Why he had such faith in _family_ and _the power of love_ and why kids from fucked-up, abusive families didn't tend to end up in Gryffindor.

Albus Dumbledore, Sirius said, had never understood how terrible people could be to each other, because they were scared or powerless or simply because it felt good to them, beating someone else down. For all he had seen war and tragedy, lived a (very) long, full life, for all he had _seen_ that there were terrible people in the world, for all he had met them, fought them, he didn't understand them. Sirius suspected that this was because Dumbledore had never been truly scared or powerless himself, and being an empathic man took no joy in others' suffering. It was literally incomprehensible to him. He might _know_, academically, that abusive families existed, but...his family hadn't been.

According to Sirius, Albus and Aberforth (Dumbledore's brother, who owned the Hog's Head in Hogsmeade, apparently) hated each other, but neither had a bad word to say about their parents, unless it was that their mother had favoured the other over themselves. James had been the same, but he'd been close enough to Sirius to see at least a little of the horrorshow that was the House of Black, to understand that _bad people_, the sort of people who should never be given power over the life of a child, _existed_, even if he hadn't suffered at their hands.

Dumbledore, Sirius said, never had. Not in any way that made it _real_ to him.

So Harry was pretty sure the Headmaster had never meant to hurt him (even though he was definitely responsible for leaving him with the Dursleys). He had _thought_ that he was acting in Harry's best interests (even when he insisted that Harry needed to go back to the Dursleys). He'd been _wrong_, obviously, but now that Harry had (accidentally) broken the protections he'd put in place, there was no real reason to try to make him go back, and since he wasn't trying to hurt Harry for the sake of it (because he couldn't even comprehend the sort of person who would do something like that), there was no reason to think he would even try to _convince_ him to go back in this meeting, let alone try to find some way to _force_ him. Which, so far, he'd been right about that, Dumbledore hadn't even mentioned the World Cup. Obviously he hadn't _forgotten_ about it, he was calling Harry _Mister Potter_, so he was probably still angry with him, too. He was just...pretending not to be.

In any case, Harry didn't need the girls here for moral support, or witnesses, or whatever.

But he _was _starting to wish he'd let Hermione come along, just so this whole..._thing_ wouldn't be so...awkward. Even if she and Dumbledore ended up getting into an argument before they left, she would probably fill the silence, at least.

Because Dumbledore was just sitting in his own armchair, staring moodily into flickering flames, being all cryptic, and Harry had _no idea_ what to say. "Er...how's that, sir?"

Dumbledore sighed. "You may recall, Mister Potter, that you once asked me why Voldemort wanted to kill you as a baby. And I, thinking you too young, too recently traumatised by your run-in with Professor Quirrel and the lingering evil which had possessed him, deferred. I sent you home for the summer, thinking that, while you had been forced to face the danger Voldemort represented far sooner than I had expected, certainly sooner than I had _intended_, but you had acquitted yourself well. You fought a man's fight, Harry, and I was proud of you. You had delayed his return, bought us more time.

"Time which I, to my shame, squandered. I said nothing — eleven was far too young, I told myself, to lay such a painful burden on your shoulders."

Harry was beginning to feel...distinctly uncomfortable, about the direction of this conversation. He hadn't expected _this_ to be what Dumbledore wanted to talk to him about — he hadn't really known _what_ to expect, of course, but...this still hadn't been it. Not that he didn't want to know why Voldemort wanted to kill him, but... Hadn't he wanted to kill him for at least thirteen years now? What could possibly be so urgent that they had to talk about this _now_, tonight? Did— Had Dumbledore heard something, about what Riddle was doing? About whoever he was possessing at the Ministry?

"And so we entered your second year here, at Hogwarts. And once again you met challenges even grown wizards would shrink to face. Once again, you managed to face him down, to destroy an object so very precious to him..."

"The horcrux, I know," Harry interrupted, as the old man hesitated in a way that suggested he might go on some tangent about the stupid diary, when Harry _really_ wanted to know why they were talking about this, or at the very least, whatever terrible thing Dumbledore seemed to be working himself up to say.

Dumbledore nodded. "Miss Black will have explained, I'm sure."

"Er...Blaise, actually. It...came up, over the summer. It's...probably not important." Dumbledore perked up in a way that said he very much disagreed, but Harry refused to be distracted. You couldn't just go telling a bloke you were going to lay some painful, cryptic burden on his shoulders and then _not tell him_. "You were saying, about second year?"

The old wizard gave another heavy sigh. "Yes, well. We discussed your scar that year, we came very close to the subject. But you did not ask me again, and I could not bring myself to ruin your triumph, and in any case, twelve was hardly better than eleven to learn such a thing."

"I'm fourteen, now, professor," Harry pointed out, as calmly as he could, though he was starting to get rather annoyed. He didn't care about whatever excuses Dumbledore might have come up with not to tell him last year, he just wanted to know whatever this thing was that was so important that he'd requested a meeting on the very first night back. (That was so important it had shaped the course of his entire life?)

"Indeed... Indeed you are."

"And I still want to know why Riddle wanted to kill me," he prompted him.

"There was a prophecy," the old man said simply. "Like the one you heard Professor Trelawney make last year, Fate speaking through her, telling us... I will not tell you the precise wording," he said firmly, "For that is still not widely known, and may be of vital importance to keep from Voldemort, but the prophecy spoke of a boy. A boy who would be born at the end of July, to parents who had defied the Dark Lord three times. A boy who would have the power to destroy the Dark Lord, their fates irrevocably linked. _Neither may live while the other survives_. And so he set out to identify the child and destroy him, assure that he would be the one to live by denying your survival."

_Fates irrevocably linked?_ A nauseating, cold wave of panicked shock crashed down on him as the words registered. "A prophecy." That was... _How?_

Dumbledore nodded.

"And...you're sure it was about me? I don't— I mean, I can't be the only boy born at the end of July, and— Why should it have been about _me_?" He demanded, hoping against hope that there had been some sort of...some sort of _mistake_. It _had_ to have been about someone else, didn't it? "It didn't have my _name_ in it, did it?"

Dumbledore gave him a soft smile, probably thought that was supposed to be a joke. "Ah, no... No, but I'm afraid... Prophecy is a tricky thing, Mister Potter. There were other details which suggested that you were the one, details which Voldemort did not know at the time, but which have since been confirmed — there can be no other. I am sorry, Harry, that this terrible responsibility falls to you, but... This is the reason Voldemort tried to kill you, and the reason he will not stop attempting to do so until either you or he is finished, once and for all."

The panic sunk in ever deeper with the Headmaster's every word. Harry balled his fists in his robes to keep his hands from shaking as certainty settled in his stomach, a knot of terror threatening to rise up and overwhelm him. "And...so, you just decided to hide me with Petunia until, what, he was _ready_? Because– because I'm _not_— I can't kill him, I don't know how I would even _start_, and— I can't defend myself, not _nearly_ well enough— He's going to kill me. I'm going to die..."

He didn't know whether to be furious that Dumbledore had kept this from him, had _wasted_ thirteen years of his life instead of training him to protect himself from _Voldemort's next inevitable attempt to kill him_, or _grateful_, because he was freaking out a bit, he wasn't ashamed to admit it, and he couldn't even _imagine_ trying to– to have a _life_, growing up — or even _now_ — knowing this, it was just—

A quiet, distant part of himself quashed his panic — occlumency really _was_ the _most useful thing ever_ — thinking that perhaps he really _should_ have asked the girls to come along for moral support. Hermione would be demanding the exact wording of the prophecy and arguing with Dumbledore, trying to find any way that it could possibly not be about him, even though that didn't really _matter_, he realised, because undead-Riddle would be trying to kill him _anyway_, and Lyra would...

Well, Lyra would probably be demanding that Dumbledore tell them everything he knew about Riddle and what had happened back in Eighty-One, and how he'd managed to _not die_ so she could kill him herself, properly this time. Because she was _definitely_ planning on killing him herself, basically in revenge for turning Bellatrix into his mind-slave (through childhood compulsions, which were apparently a much more legitimate mind-control excuse than the Imperius Defense) and the damage done to the House of Black in the War. She'd started a whole conspiracy and everything. If Fate said it had to be a _boy_ who killed him, Lyra would probably tell Fate to go fuck itself.

Which...didn't seem like a _terrible_ thing to do, actually. Demanding more information, he meant. (Telling Fate to go fuck itself seemed more like the sort of thing that would just piss it off...) Definitely more useful than panicking or denying that Voldemort was going to keep trying to _murder_ him, no matter _how_ stupid the reason was. (It would give him something to actually contribute to the Conspiracy, assuming they actually got as far as making a plan some day.)

Also more useful than sitting here listening to the Headmaster spouting fucking..._platitudes_ at him, all, "Harry, my boy, I know it seems overwhelming, but you must understand—"

"Stop. Please, sir. Just..._stop_. I don't care. I don't want to hear it, I don't want your excuses or explanations or whatever. What's done is done. Just... Do we have a plan?"

That, apparently, was not what Dumbledore had expected Harry to say, any more than this conversation was something Harry had expected to find himself talking about tonight. "I– I'm sorry?"

"A plan. You know, some way to make sure he's the one who dies so _I_ can live, you know, without looking over my shoulder waiting for him to show up and _murder_ me for the rest of my life."

"I must say, Harry, you're taking this...far better than I expected..."

"I'm screaming on the inside," he said drily — a phrase he had stolen from Blaise, though Blaise generally said he was _laughing_ on the inside, when he didn't think whatever was going on was very funny, even though everyone else did. Dumbledore's already cautious look grew a few degrees more concerned. "I'm— That was a joke." Well, he wasn't joking, actually, he was sure as soon as he was alone (or more likely, as soon as he made his way down to Slytherin and found Blaise) he was going to have a _massive_ freak-out over this _incredibly disturbing revelation_, but he hadn't meant for Dumbledore to take it _seriously_. "That's not important. Can we just— You _have_ to have a plan...right? So what do we know? How did my mum try to kill him? How did he survive? Was it just the horcruxes, or—"

"Horcrux_es_?" Dumbledore repeated. "As in..."

"_Yes_, as in _at least two_, I— Well, I didn't _see_ the second one, it was some locket that belonged to the Slytherins, Lyra found it in one of the old Black properties and kind of...broke it, accidentally, over the summer. And I'm _guessing_ there were more than just that one, too, since I'm still getting these weird dream-vision things..." He _knew_ there were more than just _two_, because one of the things Gin had managed to figure out from the memories she'd stolen from the _first_ horcrux was that there had been five, at least.

(According to Blaise, when Harry had got around to asking him about the Conspiracy in the wake of his freak-out about Lyra just casually going to hang out with _Bellatrix fucking Lestrange_ a couple of weeks before the whole Accidentally Killing a Horcrux Incident, and Lyra just fucking _vanishing _while he was trying to have it out with her — _yes, that's good, be angry at Lyra keeping secrets like an _arse_, much better than panicking... No, wait, focus on the fucking conversation, idiot!_)

He wasn't about to tell Dumbledore about the (at least) three other horcruxes because he was pretty sure that Gin wouldn't want Dumbledore to know that she still had pieces of Riddle floating around in her mind. He didn't imagine that would go very well for her. Best just leave it at, "Snape did tell you about that, right? Blaise said he was probably going to, so..."

"Yes, Harry, _Professor_ Snape—" (As though anyone cared about Snape's proper title at the moment...or ever.) "—has been keeping me abreast of the developments in that arena. He failed to mention, however, that another horcrux had been discovered."

"I'm...not sure he knows?" He did, of course, but, like Gin, Snape had his reasons to not tell Dumbledore things — like that he was conspiring with a bunch of students to murder the bastard on the other end of his Dark Mark. Not that Dumbledore was likely to disapprove of trying to kill Voldemort, but he'd probably think Snape was doing something wrong, getting them to help, despite him not really being in charge, or anything. It probably wasn't a great idea to make Dumbledore think Snape and Lyra were in cahoots, either. "I mean, Lyra didn't _tell_ anyone, she said she was trying to get it to answer some questions, and it wouldn't, so she threatened to set it on fire, and it _still_ didn't...so she set it on fire. And killed it. Accidentally. Before anyone even knew that she had it." Well, before Harry and Blaise had known she had it, at least. "But, I mean, that's good, right? That they don't all have to be stabbed with a bloody basilisk's fang, or whatever..."

Dumbledore, however, didn't look terribly reassured. "Harry, my boy, I'm sorry to say, but...simply setting a horcrux on fire is _hardly_ likely to be sufficient to destroy it beyond the ability of magic to repair it. Are you _certain_ that Miss Black is not possessed by the thing in much the same way as Miss Weasley was?"

Okay, that was almost _funny_. Though he couldn't exactly tell Dumbledore _why_, obviously, any more than he could tell him about Gin or Snape. The whole _having a god living in her head _thing was apparently the sort of shite that could get Lyra a death sentence if the wrong people found out about it, and if _Harry_ was Dumbledore, and had to deal with Lyra bouncing into his life and ruining _everything_, making him think people were dead and shite, he just might make sure the wrong people found out. (Harry was probably a worse person than Dumbledore, Dumbledore probably wouldn't try to get Lyra killed (..._probably_), but Harry still didn't think it was a good idea to tell him.)

"Pretty sure, yeah." Really, he'd like to see Riddle _try_ legilimising Lyra. _Harry_ had been terrified, getting stuck in her head. He'd felt lucky to get out alive, when he'd finally had a moment to think about exactly what had happened. And she had _let_ him legilimise her. If she was being _attacked_ by a mind mage... Well, put it this way, Harry was _pretty sure_ Magic Itself would win. "And it wasn't _normal_ fire, obviously." Not that he knew exactly what it _was_, other than supposedly whatever fire worked on dementors. "It didn't hurt the locket, just the enchantments on it, I guess. The smoke was heavier than air and kind of dissolved her carpet."

"I...see. And you are certain that this thing was truly a horcrux?"

"Well, like I said, I didn't talk to it, but, I dunno, would there be some sort of traces or something on it? Because I'm sure she still has it, she said something about maybe donating it to the school? So you could check it out, if you wanted."

"Yes, I think I shall have to do so." Dumbledore looked singularly displeased about that prospect.

"So, um...aside from the horcrux thing, what do we know? About Riddle, I mean."

Dumbledore sighed. "So much, and yet, so very little. He lacks — has always lacked — a certain degree of..._humanity_, I suppose one might say. I knew him, as a boy. To my eternal shame, I was the one who brought him into this world, who introduced him to magic. There was always a darkness in him, cold and unfeeling...his motivations truly incomprehensible to a good man. And...I will admit that I made mistakes with him, though in truth, I am not certain that there was ever a way to redeem him, to set him on a path of righteousness, rather than one of selfishness and domination. Even when I first encountered him... I...

"I suppose the thing to do would be to arrange a series of memories for you to view. Give you an opportunity to develop some...understanding or, perhaps it is better to say, a degree of familiarity with his character. Both at Hogwarts and...after. Perhaps you will see some pattern in his decisions and behaviour that I have not. The Aurors recently did something similar, examining memories of Bellatrix Lestrange in an effort to predict her likely course of action...and in an effort to prepare their younger members for the horror they will almost certainly face, in attempting to apprehend her. And then... I will consider our next steps."

He kept on, giving a long, rambing sort of plan-outline _thing_ that sounded _suspiciously _like _No, there is no plan to ensure your survival in the eventual conflict with the undead Dark Lord, I'm making this shite up as I go._ But it was, Harry supposed, better than nothing?

Maybe not _much_ better than nothing, but at least now Harry _knew_. Why Riddle wanted to kill him. Even if it was a _terrible_ reason. And, that Dumbledore expected _Harry_ to finish him off. (That prophecy _had_ to be wrong, or not about him, or _something_, because, _seriously_?!)

Now he just had to figure out what to do about it. He could... He could write to Sirius about it, the whole _prophecy_ thing — he'd been around back during the war, and James _had_ to have told him _something_ about it, he might know more of the specifics of _why Harry_ — which did raise the question why _Sirius_ had never mentioned the reason Voldemort was trying to kill Harry... Maybe James had sworn him to secrecy, or something. Hmm... Well, he would still ask, he decided.

And, as Blaise had pointed out, when he was freaking out about coming back here, knowing that Voldemort was possessing someone in the Ministry, that he was _here_, Harry _did_ have other, very competent allies, at least one of whom was already planning on taking care of this particular problem. Which, Lyra could have him. She was _far_ more qualified than Harry to kill _anyone_, up to and including Riddle.

Seriously, Harry _really_ didn't see how it was possible that _he_ was the _only_ person who could _possibly_ kill Voldemort. He was sure that if they could get a copy of the prophecy, Hermione could find a way to make it apply to just about anyone. That was one of the few things he'd learned in Divs, last year — true prophecies were like Fate saying _checkmate_, but they _could_ have _dozens_ of interpretations, the only sure thing was that _one_ of them would happen. And the best way to deal with them was, he thought, to just ignore them?

Because this didn't really change anything, other than Harry knowing now that Voldemort was... No, actually he'd already _known_ Voldemort was an insane idiot. A terrifyingly powerful, evil idiot who refused to just _fucking die already_. The only thing that had changed was, now Harry knew that Voldemort was trying to kill him because he thought his own life depended on it. (Fucking ridiculous, but okay...) Whoever was _actually_ destined to kill him (surely not really Harry) would do it, regardless of whatever else happened, that was how prophecies _worked_. Harry just had to stop Riddle killing _him_ in the meanwhile.

Yeah, easy. He could _totally_ do that... (He couldn't do that, he had no idea what he was doing, he could feel the panic breaking through his attempts to push it away, his pulse rate increasing, palms growing sweaty—) "I– I have to go," he said, jolting to his feet without actually deciding to stand. He had to get...away. He was going to lose it, because even though this didn't really change _anything_, it definitely _felt_ like it did, like talking about it made it more _real_, and—

"I understand," Dumbledore said kindly, his tone...too deliberate to be really reassuring, even if Harry was in any way capable of _being_ reassured at the moment. "This must be a great shock, of course, and a great deal to process all at once. And I have, in any case, kept you from your friends and your bed long enough." _Ha_, as though Harry would be sleeping tonight... "I will send you a message when I have gathered the first batch of memories for our examination."

"Er...right. Yes. I'll just...lot to think about..." he muttered, even as he fled, paying far more attention to his breathing and the effort of keeping the shrieks of terror and frustration trying to escape his throat to himself than the direction his feet were taking him. Anywhere away from here was fine.

Anywhere away from people and dark and quiet and preferably with Blaise there to tell him that everything was going to be alright and actually make him believe it, because he was having a _hell_ of a time convincing himself, at the moment, that he wasn't doomed to die horribly at the hand of an undead madman at some unknown point in the future.

_Just breathe, Harry... He's not going to kill you _right now_, just breathe, it's fine, you're fine, everything's fine..._

(He'd be a lot more reassured if he could pretend he didn't know when he was lying to himself.)

* * *

_We just can't write short chapters, can we..._

_By the way, the "Mother" Éanna occasionally refers to isn't his mum, it's an epithet for Bríd. The Watcher is another epithet, for the Morrígan this time._

[Mister Éanna] — _In case anyone is wondering, this is the proper polite address for mages with Gaelic names (in English, at least, they hardly bother with titles and such in Gaelic). Formally, he'd be called Mister Éanna or Éanna Ó Caoimhe (__**without**_ _the title). Brits who aren't aware of the proprieties might call him Mister Caoimhe, but this is very wrong: to Gaelic ears, it'd sound like you're talking to someone whose __**first**_ _name is Caoimhe, and also being very rude (Caoimhe is a girl's name, so). Informally, he's simply Éanna, or Éanna Mhuirgel (mother), or if they need to be __**really**_ _specific Éanna Mhuirgel Rórdáin (mother and grandfather). Most of his cousins call him Éanna Faiteach ("skittish/shy"), but this is __**very**_ _rude, and shouldn't ever be used by anyone outside the family. Or really even people __**in**_ _the family, but children are terrible._

_You think this is bad, having two slightly different ways of doing names side-by-side, it actually used to be a __**lot**_ _worse. There was a time in the Isles where you had heavily romanised Celtic, more traditional Celtic, and various Germanic peoples intermixing in a relatively small space, all with their own differing naming conventions and formal modes of address, with local varieties that could be completely unpredictable. In the Founders' time, for example, it might have been hard to know how you're supposed to be addressing someone without just asking them. The modern (mostly) binary Brit–Gael system is already greatly streamlined._

_And I thought about that __**way**_ _too hard. —Lysandra_

_If anyone didn't read the summer scenes and is wondering what happened with Lyra visiting Bellatrix the second time, that's in __**Go the Fuck to Sleep**__, should be the last chapter in the summer fic. _

_Paramenon — convicted criminal who's sentenced to something like house arrest under the direct supervision of a person who guarantees their good behavior. Basically it amounts to bond-slavery. It's very rare._

_After the debacle at the World Cup, Dumbledore decided that if Harry doesn't want Dumbledore to protect him, then he won't. Cue actually telling him shite for the first time ever. Doesn't hurt that telling Harry this might actually have scared him back into compliance with whatever the hell Dumbledore told him to do. You know, if Harry didn't have anywhere else to turn for help. So, bit of a flaw in that plan... —Leigha_


	8. Welcome to Hogwarts — Rachel Campbell

Hogwarts, Rachel Campbell had decided (sometime between getting off the train and taking her seat at the Slytherin table in the Great Hall), was _splendid_. She literally could not think of anything else that word should be used for if not Hogwarts.

Granted, she hadn't seen that much of it, yet, but from the outside it looked like something out of a fairy tale — an ancient castle looming over the lake, its dozens of towers making it look kind of gothic and absolutely dwarfing the trees behind it, the whole thing glittering with lights, even though the sun hadn't been quite down yet. They were kind of in a valley, with the castle a little way up one side, so most of it was already pretty dark, but the tallest of the towers still caught the light, grey stone turned to gold by the sunset. The _inside_ reminded her of a cathedral, too, with all the arches, but one with a _lot_ of paintings in gilded frames (_moving, talking _paintings, whispering amongst themselves and calling greetings to the new students).

The stone walls were hung with tapestries between the paintings, and there were nooks set into them with all _sorts_ of sculptures and suits of armour and things on display. The stone floors were polished until they shone, at least where they weren't covered by carpets of the Arabian Nights variety. (Which was to say, she wouldn't be _at all_ surprised if someone told her the enormous Persian rug in the hall where they'd been waiting before they were sorted could fly.) Every room was lit with floating silver and gold and crystal chandeliers or wall sconces or even just _balls of light_, and the Great Hall _didn't have a ceiling_! (Or, well, it _did_, but it was enchanted to show the sky outside, like a giant skylight.) It just felt _rich_ in a way like nowhere she'd ever been before.

Even the _air_ was _more_, like in Mister Ollivander's shop, as though she could feel the magic all around her, warm and welcoming. If she'd had any doubts, on the train, about whether she really should be here — at a _magic school_, _studying magic_ — just _being_ here made her forget all about them. In fact, she wasn't sure she'd ever felt so much like she belonged anywhere, ever. She'd only been in the castle for about twelve hours, and it already felt like home.

She was starting to think that deciding to be a Slytherin might have been a bad idea, though. Yes, she'd kind of been thinking that it sounded like the House she was best suited for before she'd gotten on the train, and then she'd run into that older girl, Lyra Black, when she got so annoyed with the jerks in her first compartment that she'd just left, and she'd made it sound like the best House if she really wanted to become part of Magical Britain (which she did, the real world had never done her any favours), and then the Hat had said something about her being as good for the House as it would be for her (it had thought it was funny that Black had thought it might have any objection to sending her there), but...

She'd have to be a complete _idiot_ to not have noticed how everyone had been staring at her, all through dinner, whispering to their friends behind their hands and sniggering ominously. It had taken all of two minutes after the Sorting ended for the older students on either side of her to start giving her the third degree about her family and whether she was related to any other witches or wizards. She wasn't, but she'd decided as soon as her mother had dropped her off at King's Cross that she was going to pretend that her mother and her series of terrible boyfriends and her father and stepmother and the baby sister they considered better than her in every possible way didn't exist for the next ten months, so she'd said she was an orphan and didn't know a damn thing about her family. Which, well...

It was true that Professor McGonagall had mentioned that some people could be "a bit prejudiced" against magical kids who were born to non-magical parents, but it hadn't taken much time at all for Rachel to realise she'd undersold it. The muttering and staring had only grown more interested and vaguely threatening after she told the boy next to her that she'd _grown up_ with normal people, even if she claimed she didn't know who her parents were and they _could _have been magical — she could only imagine how much worse it would be if they _knew_ she was muggleborn.

And she hadn't missed how all the other kids already seemed to know each other, forming little cliques on the walk down to the Common Room and clumping together, leaving her alone on the outskirts of the mob. No one had sat next to her either, when they'd taken seats to listen to their Head of House, Professor Snape — _not_ Professor _Snake_, which was what she'd heard the first time it was said, she'd thought someone was having her on since that was their house mascot, too — lecture them on the House Rules. And _then_ she'd found out that Lyra Black wasn't even a Slytherin, she'd just convinced Rachel to try to get into the snake House because she _knew_ it was going to– to make people pick on her, not even because she wanted Rachel to suffer, just...to make trouble! For _everyone_. She just didn't _care_ that Rachel was going to spend the next seven years surrounded by people who _hated_ her, just because she wasn't raised by wizards!

"She didn't lie to you, though," Black's friend said, out of nowhere. Or at least, Rachel _assumed_ the tall, graceful boy with the startlingly golden-brown eyes was a friend of hers. She guessed he could just be some random bloke she'd dragged along to help keep an eye on them all — he'd been assigned to go last, make sure no one wandered off. Black herself was halfway down the corridor, skipping and chattering away at the other first-years, who were following her to the Great Hall for breakfast. (Apparently, the duties of the fourth-year prefect, which wasn't even a thing, included getting up early to make sure the new kids didn't get too lost on the way to breakfast. And anything else the _actual_ prefects didn't want to do, probably.) Rachel had been excluded from all the little cliques of kids who _clearly_ already knew each other this morning too — which was _not_ a surprise, given that Black had announced that she was going to use Rachel to somehow _fuck up _Slytherin House — so she'd kind of fallen to the back of the mob, with Mister Éanna — one of Professor Snape's apprentices, even though he didn't look like he was old enough to be out of school yet — and this bloke Black had introduced as the fourth-year _boys'_ prefect (which _still wasn't a thing_).

"It's Zabini," he added, again, out of nowhere. "Blaise, if you like."

"Are you reading my mind?" she asked. Could wizards read minds? She couldn't (she didn't think), but she didn't have a better explanation for what was going on right now. That _could_ have been a lucky guess, him giving his name just as she was wondering what it was (_possibly_), but it seemed a _little_ unlikely that he'd _just guessed_ that she was thinking about Black tricking her a second ago, too.

"No, that would be _unethical_," he said, in a tone that suggested he didn't much care, a little bored and a little amused. "You're just thinking _really loudly_."

That... "How do you _think loudly_? Or quietly, for that matter? Isn't... That doesn't make sense."

"You just do?" He shrugged, then yawned. "You have more immediate concerns than learning occlumency, and I'm not awake enough to explain it right now, so I'm going to go with _don't worry about it_."

There was a sort of tingling at the back of her mind when he said not to worry, not _quite_ like the way all the air around her seemed to vanish whenever Black looked at her, but... "Did you just do something?"

"Again, that would be unethical." That wasn't a _no_... "Anyway, I was _going_ to say, Lyra was right — if you can make it in Slytherin, you can make it anywhere, and if you're serious about proving you're just as good as any of those bitches, this is where you want to be. Besides, are you telling me you _didn't_ think you belonged here, even before you met her?" Well, _no_, but... "Yeah, that's what I thought."

"_I_ think you really _are_ reading my mind."

"Just your body language, that time." He gave her a dazzling smile, only to have it broken by another yawn.

"That sounded an awful lot like admitting you _weren't_ just reading my body language _last_ time."

"Well, I did tell you that you were thinking too loudly, so..."

"Ugh, whatever." She pouted at him for a brief moment before very deliberately turning to talk to someone else instead. Of course, the only other person around to talk to was Mister Éanna. (She still thought that was weird, she'd thought Éanna was his _first_ name...) "So... You're going to be teaching my potions class?"

Mister Éanna, who seemed to be even more out of it than Zabini the Sleepy Mindreader, his eyes wandering over the portraits and decorations on the wall on his other side, didn't answer.

"Éanna."

"What?" the older boy asked, obviously rather startled. He turned in their direction, though Rachel didn't think he was quite looking directly at either of them. She'd noticed last night that he was all fidgety and shy, like he felt out of place at the front of the room, which didn't seem like a good thing, for a teacher. Maybe it was different, teaching things, as opposed to everyone complaining about him being Professor Snape's apprentice almost before he was introduced? Though she'd gotten the impression from some of the things Professor Snape had said when he was shutting down the complaining that Mister Éanna had mostly been homeschooled, or something, so maybe he just wasn't used to being around that many people, period. Rachel certainly wasn't. There had to have been over a hundred people jammed into the common room for the introductions, before the Head of the House had sent everyone but the new students and the prefects away.

"Miss Campbell was talking to you."

"Oh, um..."

Well, _crap_. She hadn't really had anything specific to _say_, she'd just been looking to make small talk with him because she didn't want to talk to psychic boy over there, and Mister Éanna didn't seem to have much more idea what to say to fill the silence than she did. She finally came up with, "I was just wondering if you've been teaching long? I mean, you don't look like you're that old, so..."

Actually, now that she was thinking about it, that actually was a good question. Maybe wizards aged slower or something and he was really in his twenties, because she _definitely_ wouldn't have thought Black was three years older than her. Her friend, though, looked about the same age as Mister Éanna — fourteen or fifteen — and they were supposedly in the same year, so...

"Ah...no. I've never taught before. I've never even been in a potions classroom, as in, with other people, before."

_Great_. That sounded like _exactly _the kind of teacher she wanted for a subject she never even knew existed before last month. _Not!_ "So...why are you teaching us, then?"

Mister Éanna muttered something under his breath that might have been Irish. He did sound kind of Irish, like the British wizards sounded _kind of_ British. (Their accent wasn't quite like any she'd ever heard before, but she would still have guessed they were British, not say, Australian, or something.) "It wasn't _my _idea, I thought I was just going to do marking and that sort of thing. I, I don't know _what_ Master Severus was thinking. Well, I do, he told me, but I don't— It's a terrible idea, almost as bad as telling me to _befriend Lyra Black_!"

Zabini grinned. "Yeah, but not as bad as _him_ teaching the first-years. I'm not entirely convinced he understands that some people find introductory potions difficult, and not just tedious busy work. He told you to befriend Lyra?"

Mister Éanna nodded. "Yes, and in case you haven't noticed, that girl is terrifying. Have you felt her magic? And even if she wasn't, I don't know how to _do _friends! I think he might actually be trying to force me to give up and leave. At least there's a good reason for me to practice talking about potions in front of people, but— I cannot overstate how terrible an idea this is!"

Zabini looked very much as though he was trying not to laugh. "It's really not. And he's not trying to force you out. In fact, if I had to guess, he wants you to keep an eye on her and tell him if she's planning to potion the entire school again or, I don't know, starts summoning demons or something." _Summoning demons?!_ "Though _I_ would probably tell him if she started summoning demons, eldritch abominations are above my pay grade." Was he actually serious about that? _HEY! Psychic boy! Are you serious about that?!_ "And, again, if I had to guess, I'd say he wants _her_ to make sure everyone else doesn't make your life a living hell. Even the slowest dunderheads among the student body are less likely to harass you for being socially awkward if you have terrifying friends."

"...Oh." He lapsed into silence for a few steps before asking, almost hesitantly, "What did she dose the school with?"

"Some babbling potion she combined with something to give us all cold symptoms to screw with the old Divs professor's head. See, Trelawney made a fake prophecy about the whole school getting a cold in February, and Lyra decided to make it come true, but the only way to get a potion to _everyone_ is to get the kitchen elves to help, so she needed to make it _look_ like she was just doing something silly and mostly harmless to get them to play along. You know, as opposed to trying to make everyone ill. Also, she thought it was fucking hilarious that no one in the school could speak the same languge all day."

"Are you serious?" There were so many things he'd just mentioned so casually, Rachel didn't even know where to start. Even ignoring the _summoning demons_ thing, there was still, you could _give people colds_ with magic? And make them not be able to speak the same language? Elves were real? Okay, maybe that shouldn't be a surprise, _goblins_ were apparently real, but they _worked in the kitchens_? There was a class about making prophecies? Like, what, full marks on your final exam if whatever you see in your crystal ball actually _happens_?

(This whole magical world thing was _so_ cool!)

"That's..."

"That's completely _ridiculous_, is what it is!" Rachel exclaimed. She realised it was rude, cutting off a teacher, even if he was only a student-teacher, but she couldn't help herself, it _was_.

"Actually...I'm not surprised," Mister Éanna said, followed by, "Where did she get the blood of an omniglot?"

Zabini rolled his eyes. "You two will get along fine."

Mister Éanna suddenly looked much more uncomfortable again. "Um, no. I'm bad at people. Like _really bad_. I can't even talk to _normal_ people and she's like..._more_ of a normal person than normal people, and—"

"And _that_ might be the funniest thing I've heard in weeks."

"What's the funniest thing you've heard in weeks?" the girl in question asked, bouncing back to them as they entered the Great Hall, which — _shite_! Rachel hadn't been paying attention to the last couple of corridors and turns they'd taken to get here!

"Éanna thinks you're a normal person." Black laughed. "And stop panicking, Campbell, you can pretty much always follow someone to the Commons and back, we do all eat in the same place at the same time."

Oh. Right. That...did make sense, Rachel guessed, trying not to look too embarrassed about asking a stupid... Wait, she hadn't even said anything aloud! _Again_! "Stop reading my mind! It's creepy!"

"I wasn't. You just have a terrible poker face. Though, yes, I was serious about summoning demons. That's a thing."

Zabini, on the other hand, had a really _good_ poker face, she _still_ couldn't tell if he was lying or not, smirking at her all amused like he knew she couldn't tell. (Throwing in that demon comment to confuse her wasn't fair.) After a second she just gave up. "Why is that funny?" she asked Black, who was still giggling.

She took a deep breath before answering, obviously trying to calm herself enough to speak. "If I'm a normal person, Éanna and I must have very different definitions of _normal_. I mean—"

"Lyra!" A tall girl with bushy brown hair scraped back into a fluffy pony-tail and a book bag that looked like she was planning on going to about ten lessons today (when there weren't any at all until tomorrow), was stalking toward them from the direction of the Gryffindor table. "Where— You didn't come back to the room last night."

"Very observant of you, Maïa. I didn't go back to the tower at all, actually. Good morning to you, too."

The newcomer ignored the slightly sarcastic greeting. "_Why_? I wanted to ask you what Professor McGonagall wanted to— You're not avoiding me, are you?"

"Er, no? Why would I be avoiding _you_? I _was_ kind of avoiding the rest of the Gryffindors — in case you didn't notice, they were being more annoying than usual at me about Harry not being dead. Which, while I might have made _Dumbledore_ think that, and I'll even admit that that does sound like the sort of thing I would do, _I_ wasn't the one who went and announced it to the whole bloody country, was I? I _distinctly _recall telling people I was obliviated and didn't remember anything about Harry leaving. And there's only so much whinging I can listen to before I start wanting to throttle people, and if I did that, I'd never hear the end of it from Sirius, so I crashed the Slytherin orientation meeting after Minnie finally stopped _her_ whinging — nothing important to report there, just, you know, if she thinks I'm trying to drive _another _professor insane she'll be forced to expel me, because she doesn't have the power to inflict real consequences on me. Also, she wouldn't let me have my time table last night because she's a petty bitch like that.

"Then I figured you and Gin would already be sleeping, so I started working on a map of the Castle — I'm the girls' prefect for our year now, I've been assigned to teach the new Snakelings how to find their way around — and then I found Missus Norris trapped in a suit of armour, which got me thinking, what if I made a suit of armour _for_ Missus Norris, and then the image of an armoured, human-sized Missus Norris going on a rampage popped into my head, so I spent most of the night looking at feline anatomy and different potential materials, trying to find something I could just conjure in the right shapes — metal-shaping charms are a crapshoot — that could be enchanted for longevity, and so it wouldn't hinder the flexibility of a cat while still providing protection from anyone who might try to shrink her or stun her or whatever, and then whether I should make the armour human-sized to start, which would be easier for the joints, but I'd have to try to put armour on a giant cat, which sounds...difficult, even if I knocked her out first, or make it small and enlarge both the cat and the armour together, which would stop her just getting stuck in the human-sized cat armour when she reverted, but would also limit the range of potential materials, and I'd have to find a way to ensure that—"

"So, what I'm hearing here is you didn't finish the map?" Zabini interrupted. "And tone down the magic, you're making Éanna uncomfortable and suffocating your new pet."

Black turned to Rachel, blinking in what could have been confusion, the fascination that had been growing as she spoke, to the point that Rachel found herself just staring at the witch, watching her talk, briefly intensifying to that same overwhelming, _what happened to the air_ level it did every other time Black focused on her. After a moment, though, it fell away almost completely, leaving Rachel wondering when, exactly, they'd sat down, and how, exactly, she'd managed to acquire a plate of eggs and pancakes. "Better?"

"You mean you were doing that on _purpose_?" Because if she _was_ — and it kind of seemed like it, since she'd managed to _stop_ — that put her convincing Rachel to go to Slytherin in a very different, _deliberate_ sort of light. And given that everyone there was apparently going to have it out for her, that was just _mean_.

"No. I can _stop_ doing it on purpose, though. If I think about it. Just hit me with a stinging jinx or something if it starts bothering you." ...Because Rachel definitely knew how to _hit someone with a stinging jinx_, and she would definitely think to do it while just staring at Black like an idiot. "Where were we? Right! Map! I got the basic layout down, but no, I didn't finish it. I ended up going home and arguing with Sirius for three hours over whether I could use Crookshanks as a model and-or-slash testing kneazle for cat armour. He said no." She pouted down at her own plate for a second, spearing a bit of pineapple covered in whipped cream before adding, "Stubborn, selfish bastard. It's not like it was an _unreasonable_ request!"

Zabini pointed at Black, raising an eyebrow at Rachel. "That's why Lyra being normal is the funniest thing I've heard in weeks."

The other girl — Rachel hadn't caught her name — sighed. "I'm never getting my cat back, am I? I can't _believe_ that arse stole my familiar!"

"Have you _met_ Crookshanks? I'm not sure Sirius had any say in the matter whatsoever. And no. Also, speaking of meeting people, this—" She pointed at Rachel with her fork. "—is the muggleborn Slytherin I decided to sponsor on the train, and the tall, awkward guy is one of Sev's apprentices. Sev made a very convincing argument for me helping him get his bearings here and I didn't have any other plans today, so I'm giving him a tour of the school after breakfast, if you want to come. Campbell, you should come, too, since I haven't finished that map, yet."

"Um...hi? When did you decide to— Really, Lyra, that was the _worst_ introduction. I'm Hermione. And you are...?" she asked, her eyes flicking between Rachel and Mister Éanna.

Zabini sighed. "Maïa, meet Éanna Ó Caoimhe, Professor Snape's apprentice — call him Éanna or Mister Éanna, using surnames sounds weird to Gaels. And this is Rachel Campbell, one of our new snakes. Éanna, Campbell, this is Hermione Granger."

Black snorted. "Full marks for propriety, five out of ten for usefulness. Maïa's my muggleborn girlfriend, Rachel."

"Do you have some _other_ girlfriend I should know about?" Granger asked pointedly, which...

Girlfriend? At first she'd thought Black just meant girl-who-is-a-friend, but the way Granger said it... Was that normal, here, for two girls to be..._girlfriend_ girlfriends? Like, boyfriend–girlfriend girlfriends? That was...weird. Maybe not as weird as talking paintings, or maybe not in the same way, but it still kind of stood out, one of those things that made her realise she wasn't in the real world anymore, and not just in a moving-staircases kind of way.

"No?"

"In that case, you _do_ know it sounds a bit racist to introduce me as your _muggleborn_ girlfriend?"

She shrugged. "Sorry? Is that the sort of thing I should apologise for?" Psychic boy nodded. "Do I need dead things and/or American candies?" ...Did she mean flowers and chocolates? Weird. Whatever, Psychic Boy shook his head, very seriously, even though everyone else seemed like they were trying not to laugh, even Black's (apparently not very) offended girlfriend. (Rachel thought she must be used to Black being — probably? — unintentionally rude, if she was always like this.) "Oh, good. Can I apologise in advance? Because I have no idea what sort of things muggleborns think are weird and need explaining about Magical Britain, so I wanted Campbell to know she should ask you about things like that." Oh. Good to know, she guessed. "Or Blaise, I guess—"

"Sterling recommendation, Black," Zabini interjected.

"—but I'm totally going to keep doing it, just to annoy everyone who cares about that kind of shite."

Rachel snorted, biting her lip as she tried not to laugh. It wasn't really funny, just, the way she said it... "The pureblood twats you wanted an excuse to pick a fight with, you mean?"

"Yep!"

"_Lyra_! It's the _first day back_!"

Black giggled at her girlfriend's outrage. "Yes, and? My dear cousins have had the _whole summer_ to prepare for the next round."

"Er...cousins?" Rachel repeated. "Which ones are you related to?"

"Well, in Slytherin? Pretty much all of them. Definitely all the nobility, though most of them aren't even second cousins."

"Wait, you're _nobility_?" Rachel would _not_ have guessed that. Not that she'd ever _met_ a noble anything, but weren't they supposed to be, she didn't know...dignified?

Zabini answered before Black could stop laughing long enough to form actual words. "Yeah, the House of Black was one of the seventeen founding families of the Wizengamot. Nobility in Magical Britain just means your family has a seat in...basically our parliament. I can explain the government later, if you like."

"Better you than me. I've been informed that my priorities are wildly inappropriate for teaching anyone anything, but especially how politics work. Which is weird, because I'm pretty sure everyone else considers collecting bits of interesting information to serve as leverage over various individuals and Houses to be a top priority, too, but." She shrugged. "Social things are not my forté."

Granger snorted at that. "Human things aren't your forté, you mean."

"Well, _yeah_, but she's not trying to join the wilderfolk or the house elves, so that's hardly relevant."

"That's not what she meant," Zabini informed her. "And you really need to explain how things are _supposed_ to work before explaining how they _actually_ work."

"I maintain that that's both boring and unnecessary since it's highly inaccurate and useless for day-to-day politicking. I mean, does it really matter how many votes you need to pass a motion if you don't know who to bribe to get it on the docket in the first place?" Black rolled her eyes. "But whatever, you can teach Harry and Meda can teach Emma, and I will happily not teach anyone anything, because I have more exciting things to do. Such as, _literally anything_."

"You know, teaching is supposed to be one of the best ways to learn a subject fully — ensuring that you understand it well enough to explain it to someone else," Granger pointed out, giving her girlfriend a teasing smirk.

"I'm pretty sure success in actually participating in politics is a better measure of one's understanding of the subject than whether one can explain it to someone who doesn't know the Chief Warlock from a hole in the ground. That's really more a measure of how well one understands and can communicate with normal people, which I've already admitted I'm pants at. That's why I have Blaise. Speaking of which, Éanna? Orientation tip number one: ask Blaise to explain why people are being stupid and confusing. He's very good at explaining things that are supposedly obvious to people who just don't get it."

"And here I thought you kept me around for my pretty face," Zabini said. His tone was _very _dry, but he was obviously trying not to smile.

"Oh, that, too. But you're not a fourth-year prefect because you're pretty."

"Fourth-year prefect?" Granger repeated, sounding as though she couldn't decide whether to be outraged or amused, her face twisting into an equally confused expression. Apparently she'd missed Black mentioning that, earlier. "You can't just declare Blaise to be a prefect, Lyra."

"Well, _obviously_ I can't _just _declare _Blaise_ to be a prefect — everyone knows prefects come in pairs. I declared myself to be one last night."

"That's not what I meant, and you know it."

"And _you_ know it's not official. I can't take away points or assign detentions, or whatever, and I don't actually have responsibilities which I would inevitably neglect if I were to get bored with them. Well, more _when_ than _if_, I suppose. I mean, I _know_ I would be a _terrible_ prefect, really. No idea _what_ Slughorn was thinking... Anyway, I'm not sure what your point is? Aside from generally being annoyed with me for no obvious— Wait. This isn't still about the World Cup, is it? Because I didn't kill anyone who wasn't an acceptable target—"

Okay, hold the phone — Black had _killed people_?! And all the others just carried on eating as though this was a perfectly normal thing to say, too! What the _hell_?! For one thing, Black was obviously kind of scary — Rachel hadn't really seen her _do_ anything scary (other than the thing with the being fascinating and the staring, maybe), but the way everyone else acted around her (including a _student-teacher_ saying she was _terrifying, in front of his students_) made it obvious that she was — but she was only fourteen! Kids _couldn't_ be expected to just go around _killing people_ here, could they? She refused to think that was normal, even in the insane magical world. Two girls dating, yes, fine. Fourteen-year-olds _killing people_ on their summer hols, _not fine_! And for another, she was just _talking about it_, in the open, like it wasn't a big deal _at all_ — were there no _laws_ in this country?! Even if Black's friends were okay with her apparently _killing people_...

Zabini smirked at her across the table, his eyes sparkling with amusement — he was _definitely_ reading her mind, creepy psychic! And apparently he thought it was funny that she thought this was a problem! And, okay, maybe she _was_ overreacting a little, there _had_ to be laws, she knew about the Statute of Secrecy, so if they were talking about it openly — even if it was vaguely horrifying that no one thought it was terrible that Black had had to kill someone — she must have done it in self-defense, or something. But _still_!

"—and I didn't _die_, so—"

"No, but you _could_ have! And you didn't tell me!"

"Why _would_ I? What would be the point of telling you after the fact that I could have died? I mean, yeah, if I told you _before_, I guess you could try to talk me out of it, but the thing about life-or-death situations is by the time they reach that point there's not exactly time to send your girlfriend an owl about them."

"You could, oh, I don't know, avoid putting yourself in situations that are likely to devolve into life-or-death conflicts, maybe?"

"I really can't. See, that's why I said you could _try_ to talk me out of it. And it's really better not even to try, you can ask Harry how well it went for— _Ouch! _What the—" The girl whirled around to see who had just hit her from behind with a bright orange spell. She smirked when she saw a pale, dark-haired boy dressed in not-school robes stalking toward her. Black, Zabini, and Granger were all wearing normal clothes (or _more_ normal, at least — Black kind of looked like she was wearing pyjamas of some sort), though there were a few other kids around in school robes or nicer, more colourful ones like this bloke's. "Oh, morning Theo."

"Have you lost your bloody mind, Black? I can't marry you because someone's almost _certainly_ going to kill you before you leave school. It might be me."

"_What?_" Rachel wasn't sure she'd ever seen anyone look as shocked as Granger did right now.

"Being a little mad isn't at all the same thing as actually losing it, and my reason was better. Also, you know you love me. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to go annoy my Head of House until she gives me my fucking time table. Maïa, do you want me to get yours, too?"

"What? No, I want you to explain why you and Theo are talking about getting married!"

"A, we were talking about why we _aren't_ getting married—"

"If you call barging into a bloke's warded bedroom at half six and informing him that you can't get married _talking_..." Theo grumbled, dropping onto the bench between Zabini and a much older girl, she _had_ to be a seventh-year, picking at a bowl of oatmeal and reading a heavy-looking book that she'd propped up against a milk jug. The table (not Slytherin's, maybe...Ravenclaw's?) had actually become much more crowded while Rachel wasn't paying attention. It had been almost empty when they'd gotten there.

"—and B, Blaise can explain. Or Theo. Probably. I'll be back." She skipped away before her girlfriend could stop her, headed toward the very stern Deputy Headmistress, who was just taking a seat at the mostly-vacant head table. Apparently breakfast wasn't nearly as formal a meal as supper had been last night.

Granger glared at Zabini, who began to explain with an exasperated eye-roll. "She was annoying Sirius about his marriage prospects, and he pointed out that she's just as eligible as he is. She told him she'd ask Theo if he was spoken for yet because he's the only suitable candidate she actually knows, and he doesn't want to get married either." That really didn't explain why a couple of fourteen-year-olds were seriously discussing the prospect of marrying each other. (And the way Granger had reacted had implied that they _were_ serious.) Not _at all_. "You really should consider it, though, Theo. Being in negotiations with the Blacks would keep everyone else off your arse, and Sirius won't break off negotiations without Lyra's approval. You could probably keep it going for _decades_."

"That's..." Theo began, apparently about to object, dismiss the idea as completely ridiculous — which, Rachel kind of thought the whole _thing_ was ridiculous. She still didn't know why they were even talking about marriages in the first place, she just couldn't get a word in edgewise to ask. "Actually, that doesn't sound like a terrible idea, even though I'm absolutely certain that it is. I'm sure I'll be able to come up with a reasonable objection after coffee. Also, where's the post?"

"Running late, appa—" Zabini cut himself off, looking up toward a large window over the head table. An owl had just fluttered through it, winging its way over to the Hufflepuff table, with what looked like a rolled up newspaper clutched in its claws. "Never mind."

That first owl was followed by about a hundred more, streaming in and seeking out their targets, dropping letters and papers onto plates and laps before attacking plates of sausage and bacon and generally making a mess of things. The one that delivered Theo's paper — the _Northern Herald_ — tried to steal some of Rachel's eggs. Well, actually _did_ steal some — she wasn't about to try waving it off, those beaks and talons looked _awfully_ sharp, and owls were _much_ bigger than she'd thought up close. When it finally launched itself back into the air, she turned to Hermione. "Is it always like this? You know, with _everything_ just being so...?"

The older girl grinned, actually looking happy for the first time since she'd joined them. "Well, you do get used to the superficial details, the owls and the talking portraits and moving staircases, and the bloody nobles getting engaged at _fifteen_ and such, but...yes. I've been here for three years, now, and I still have days where I just look around and think, my _God_, this is just _amazing_."

Rachel nodded absently, watching the last of the birds flutter back out the window, her fingers playing with a loose feather the egg thief had left behind. All weirdness aside, she could probably be here for _thirty_ years and still think that everything about this place was absolutely magical.

Just..._splendid_.

* * *

_So, we're going to try to do this posting one scene every other day or so instead of a single massive chapter every week or two. This is the first quarter of a stupidly long Welcome to Hogwarts chapter. —Leigha_

_Seriously, it's like 35k words. What the hell is wrong with us... —Lysandra_

_In case it was unclear, yes, Blaise was using legilimency to nudge Rachel into being more comfortable with certain things, like him reading her mind and Lyra killing people._

_Also, cat armour amuses me __**way**_ _too much. —Leigha_


	9. Welcome to Hogwarts — Bathsheda Babbling

Ashe thought she might murder somebody. She just wasn't certain who it would be yet.

Unfortunately, she couldn't claim this was an unfamiliar feeling — it had been something of an honour to be invited to teach at Hogwarts, by the Chief Warlock himself no less, but she'd often had occasion to wonder if agreeing hadn't been, quite possibly, the single greatest mistake of her entire life. She hadn't been struck with disaster, or anything of the like...though she did have far less attention to pay to her own work than she might like, that was a sacrifice she was willing to make (most of the time). Besides, she'd already made her point, there was time enough to explore what she wanted to.

Even if her duties at the school took up far more time than she might like, for pursuits that were less than fully engaging. As much as she did enjoy the Graphic Arts, there was something about teaching the exact same thing over and over and over, year after year, that just got...tedious. There were reasons she tended to sit next to Severus at staff meetings — she didn't have his viciousness, but sometimes she felt they were actually of similar mind when it came to certain things. (Besides, he was funny.) The NEWT students, at least, they were usually entertaining...if sometimes concerning.

Ashe was quite glad none of her more...curious students had managed to blow up Ravenclaw Tower (permanently). She was an awful duelist, Filius would probably kill her.

And, well, it hadn't quite occurred to her at the time that the prestige of holding a teaching post at Hogwarts was partially a political one — the greater part of their compensation came in the form of access to certain powerful individuals, the ability to exercise some minor influence in their country, their actual _salary_ practically an afterthought. Ashe was, to put it mildly, completely unprepared to take advantage of that sort of thing, and simply unsuited to rubbing shoulders with the kind of people in her new social circle. The other professors, fine (most of them), she could handle that — though, it was surreal sometimes that her quirky, ineffectual, pretty much _useless_ boss was the Chief Warlock. (She'd suggested repeatedly they hire on more staff and maybe some _counselours_, she was _not_ qualified to deal with the issues the students sometimes brought her, it was the _twentieth century_, Albus, fucking hell.) When the wealthy and the well-connected and the bloody nobility kept writing her and asking for meetings and schmoozing in an effort to get better marks for their children or favours or simply to be seen with her or what else she couldn't even guess, Ashe had _no_ idea how to handle that.

She'd literally had to turn down marriage offers. It was insane.

She'd been about as far as it came from Hogwarts and bloody nobility, okay. She'd been born to the Mistwalker Clans. Her education had come from home schooling, Beauxbatons and _an Ollscoil_, bloody _muggle secondary and university_. Before being hired here, Hogwarts and the upper echelons of British magical society had been _names_ to her, they might as well be in a foreign country. No, worse than a foreign country, really — adapting to Aquitania and France hadn't been nearly as bad, magical or muggle. A gulf in class, it seemed, was more difficult to overcome than one of nation.

Since she'd taken this post, she couldn't count the times she'd fantasised about killing people. That Rowle arse on the Board, the one who'd protested over a _savage_ being added to the staff — not a fan of misters, that one. Several bureaucrats from the WEA, when she tore apart the more idiotic of the questions that somehow made it into OWL and NEWT exams over the years — apparently, having a mastery in the subject did not qualify her to judge whether exam questions were unnecessarily confusing or just _blithering idiocy_. Irritating students by the dozens, the occasional interfering parent — no, she wouldn't accept gold for better marks, _no_, she wouldn't accept lavish gifts to consider your child for an apprenticeship, _no_, she was _not_ going to marry your nephew, no matter _what_ kind of offer you make, _fucking hell_, _get out of my office_...

She would never _actually_ kill anyone, of course. (At least, not without Severus on hand to help hide the body.) But she couldn't deny she'd fantasised about it more times than she could count. And this time, this time she thought somebody might actually end up dead.

It had started out innocuously enough, months ago — with something so small, she probably could have nipped it in the bud then, might have headed it off had she any idea what would come to be. Way back in April, Lyra Black had skipped on into her office, and asked if she could start right in on sixth-year Runes come September. Ashe had tried to brush her off, but the girl had just grinned at her, started babbling off about some enchanting project she'd been working on, Ashe had only been half-listening.

Because, well, there wasn't any other answer she could reasonably give. One of those arguments she had with Dumbledore and the Department of Education with some regularity involved allowing certain students who'd been given a head start by their families to test out of earlier years — the crux of the argument being that Ashe thought it was perfectly reasonable, but she was forbidden from doing so. Hell, if _she'd_ been stuck in the third-year class for a whole ten months she might have gone _completely fucking insane_. She'd started to learn basic enchanting when she'd been _five_, by the time she'd been thirteen she would have been the equivalent of an advanced _NEWT_ student. (She had gotten her Proficiency at fifteen, in fact, entirely on home schooling and self-study.) No case she'd run into here was quite _that_ extreme — the misters did a lot with graphic magic, and the omniglot thing was kind of cheating — but there _were_ other families who considered the absolute basics part of an elementary education, something that was handled before their children were ready for Hogwarts. For some students, she thought skipping a year or two here or there would make things a whole lot easier for everyone involved. But no.

Honestly, Ashe was _still_ trying to convince the Board to even _consider_ making the Graphic Arts — she detested the name _Ancient Runes_ — a core class alongside Charms and Transfiguration and Potions, like it was in other magical schools. No luck on that so far. Bloody self-righteous idiots.

So, even if she'd _wanted_ to accommodate Black, she simply wasn't permitted to. But the hyper little girl wouldn't get out of her office. Just to get her to leave, Ashe had agreed that, yes, if Black got top marks on the OWL exam as a third-year, she could hardly refuse to let her into the NEWT class. And, honestly, Ashe had thought that would be the end of it.

But then the girl had shown up with the fifth-years to take the Runes (_and_ Arithmancy) OWL. And had, Ashe had been told, passed with flying colours — the WEA people who'd gone over it had apparently said it looked less like an OWL exam and more like a mastery student reviewing elementary theory.

In fact, it'd been so advanced the WEA had accused her of cheating. Black had been called into the Department in the Ministry, where she'd sat another exam — a random exam from a random year, pulled out of Records at random. Black had filled it out, surrounded on all sides by enchantments and officials watching her like a hawk. And her work had turned out just as absurdly advanced as the last time.

And, well...Ashe _had_ said she would let her into the NEWT class if she did well on the OWL, hadn't she? And the girl had — _twice_. She couldn't _not_ keep her word. She really _couldn't_ — the stories that the misters carried fae blood _were_ just stories, so she wasn't _actually_ bound to her word, but she'd been taught to act as though she were since she'd been a small child, so it made little difference. It had taken some arguing to get Minerva to agree to slot the kid in with the sixth years — then another more irritating argument with Albus, an oddly _confusing_ one, she didn't know what his deal with Black was — but finally everything had been squared away. Eventually. After much yelling and wheedling.

She'd immediately stalked over to Septima's rooms to get pissed and vent about how terrible their bosses were. Which was quickly becoming a familiar habit, unfortunately.

And now, months later, it was the first week of classes again. Ashe was sitting at her desk, strewn with open books and scattered papers and parchments, her hair turned into a poofy mess of scattered brown and yellow from running her fingers through it far too many times. It was _long_ after dark — it'd been two in the morning last she'd checked, but that'd been a while ago — and Ashe didn't know what to do.

She might just kill someone. Albus, Black, Severus, _herself_ — she didn't know who yet, but _somebody_ deserved to suffer for this insanity.

The only reason Lily Evans wasn't on the list was because the mad (brilliant) girl was already dead.

Forcing out a long sigh, Ashe pushed herself back in her chair. And winced, hand coming up to rub at her neck — she'd been leaning over her work too long, bloody hurting herself again. She tapped at her desk, activating an enchantment carved into the surface, soft blue spellglow formed into the face of a clock appearing before her. Five forty-seven, fuck. Well, she'd need an _I-feel-like-I'm-dying-but-I-need-to-teach-anyway-fuck-me_ potion from Severus anyway, and he'll probably be awake already, poor insomniac bastard. "Tænsij."

The familiar elf popped into existence next to her chair immediately. "You stayed up working again, Professor, you shouldn't do that on weeknights," she chirped in Elvish, high and soft and quick, the voice of an elf girl barely out of adolescence.

Ashe tried not to wince — not at her tone of (soft) chastisement, just... Most of the rest of Europe might have forgotten what the elves are _supposed_ to be, okay, but the misters had kept old stories alive. Looking on a domesticated elf always made her distinctly uncomfortable. "I need to see Severus," she said, matching the girl's use of Elvish. "Could you warn him I'm coming down?"

Tansy's face twisted with a displeased pout — probably irritated with ridiculous distractible academics neglecting their health, she knew Severus and Septima also got the occasional lecture from concerned and frustrated elves — but she popped off without a word.

It took a moment for Ashe to decide which papers were most important to the issue at hand, finally collected a short stack, rolled them together into a loose tube. A quick downward glance confirmed she was..._mostly_ presentable. Though, many other mages wouldn't think so — in the first week of classes, when she'd be making first impressions on new third-years, she always made a point to wear jeans, tie-dye tee shirts, and trainers, because the shocked horror on the faces of the little noble kids was hilarious. (She did it visiting her family too, because their disapproval was _also_ amusing, but theirs mostly because she wasn't a teenager anymore and the Seventies were over.) She was still dressed, at least, good enough.

The trek down to Severus's rooms in the dungeons took _way_ too long. Ashe really had to wonder why the castle was so— Well, no, the student population had once been much larger than it was now — the magical population had been larger overall, in fact — the castle was so huge because it had needed to be. It was still bloody annoying getting anywhere, even exploiting hidden passages for shortcuts it was a five minute walk.

Severus answered the door on the first knock, face long and eyes heavy with exhaustion. Though Ashe was by now familiar with how he looked after a long night alone failing to sleep, she expected he'd hardly be recogniseable to the students — the usual heavy robes were absent, instead wearing loose silk lounge trousers, a cotton shirt that, to Ashe's eye, was obviously muggle-made (though other purebloods might not know enough to recognise machine stitching), his hair tied back, which would normally be expected of men who wore their hair as long as his, but Severus never did. Presumably, because he didn't like how it looked, his face did look _very_ different without his hair framing it, more skeletal and his nose was more prominent, though less deathly pale without the contrast. Voice thick with a tired sigh, "Ashe. You do realise what time it is."

"Are you going to tell me you weren't awake?"

"I wasn't, in fact," he muttered. "I was passed out on the chair when that bloody elf popped in and woke me up."

"Oh." Whoops, her bad. Severus had the oddest sleep schedule, but he was usually up by five. Miserable and hating the world, but awake at least. "Well, you're up now, so you might as well let me in. We need to talk about Harry Potter."

Severus's eyes narrowed, glaring at her with a combination of frustration and badly-concealed concern. (His preoccupation with the Potter boy was bloody obvious to her, she didn't know how other people missed it. Maybe just more omniglot cheating, who knows.) He groaned, rubbing at his eyes. "Fine, fine, come in."

He led her inside — Severus's sitting room was dark and plain, the man had very subdued, modest taste — practically shoving her into a seat on a sofa while he busied about a drawer. Poking through potions bottles, judging by the clinking. Ashe unrolled her papers across the low table, chicken-scratch runes and arithmancy covering the surface. She noticed an alchemy journal folded over near an armchair, marked up with yellow highlighter and red pen — he'd passed out going over the work of a colleague, presumably.

When Severus returned, he near chucked a little glass bottle at her, she barely managed to catch it before it smacked her in the face. "You look like shite, Ashe," he muttered before throwing back a potion himself.

Recognising the odd, syrupy, blue-green liquid inside the bottle as his invaluable _I-feel-like-I'm-dying-but-I-need-to-teach-anyway-fuck-me_ concoction, Ashe let out an amused sniff. She didn't actually drink it, though, set it aside to take with breakfast — Severus might be able to down potions this strong on an empty stomach, but they always made her violently ill. "Get fucked up the arse, Severus," she said — in French, but he did speak French. (Well, understood it at least, his accent was atrocious.)

A dramatic roll of his eyes with the only reaction to the cursing. He sank into a nearby armchair, likely the same one he'd been sleeping in not long ago, judging by the placement of the marked-up journal and the empty glass on a side table. "I see you've been busy tonight," he muttered, eyeing the dense runework now spread across his table. "I hope it was something important, to justify waking me up before the crack of dawn."

"Those trackers you had me looking at back in June, they were tied to Potter."

One of Severus's eyebrows ticked up. The potion must be starting to kick in already, there was an intensity to his black eyes that had been absent a moment ago. "Yes. Forgive me for not explaining the particulars of the situation at the time. There were...sensitive matters involved, I hope you understand."

"Oh, I was aware, it was obvious in context." Honestly, Potter mysteriously goes missing and Severus, with his obvious preoccupation with the child, shows up with equations describing disparate trackers tied to both blood and soul, explaining that all three were tracking _one person_ — which was still absurd overkill, she didn't care _who_ they were talking about — setting her the problem of determining whether it was possible to prevent detection by all three simultaneously? _Of course_ she'd known what it was about, it'd been bloody obvious. She'd gotten an answer for Severus as quickly as she had because she'd known exactly why he'd wanted it. "Really now, Severus, you can quit the evil sneaky Death Eater act with me. I've had you figured out since October my first year teaching here. You're not nearly as good an actor as you think you are."

Severus eyes narrowed with irritation. "I'm precisely as good an actor as I think I am. Omniglots are just bloody cheaters."

"Yes, well, that too. My point is, next time you want my help with something, you needn't lie about why." Ignoring the silly man's put-upon huff, Ashe turned back down to her papers, eyes running through the logic behind the questions she wanted to ask. "The trackers. The equations you gave me were the raw enchantment, not constructed from the output of analysis charms. Yes?"

Severus nodded. "I was under the impression that it made no difference for the problem at hand, and the scripts Albus used to enchant the things in the first place were readily available."

It _did_ make a difference, actually, though in a normal situation it mightn't have been a relevant one — given other factors she was now aware of, she knew her solution wouldn't have worked. "You know, I had my first class with Lyra Black earlier today. Er, yesterday, I mean."

"And so you come to join us in our suffering."

Ashe shrugged — Black was a perfectly fine student, she thought. She'd only had her for the one session so far, yes, and while she might have been somewhat disruptive, interjecting with comments and questions more than she'd usually expect (especially for the first day back), they'd been _insightful_, _useful_ comments and questions, so she hadn't minded. As far as she was concerned, disruptions that furthered other students' learning weren't truly disruptions at all. "At the end of class, she handed over a roll of parchment, smirkingly suggesting I might find the end result of a certain project of hers very interesting. The alterations she made to a ward scheme to block those same trackers, it seems — did Black herself truly formulate them?"

An odd curl had set into Severus's lips, something that couldn't seem to decide whether it were disgusted, impressed, or resigned. "So it would seem. I did tell you the girl was talented, if you recall."

She did. In fact, he'd said Black's raw work very much reminded him of hers, in how inscrutably scattered it appeared from the outside, which she had thought was a very peculiar thing to say — the aesthetics of genius were very similar across fields and among both mages and muggles, she'd found. "Yes, well, I went over her proof, and... She started from analysis charms, I'm certain — there were elements in her description of them that weren't reflected in the original enchantment."

"I'm given to understand minor errors in design are not particularly unusual."

"This wasn't that. These trackers were tied to Potter's blood and soul. The unexpected elements _seem_ to have been due to other magics _also_ bound to the same."

"I'm sure you will approach something resembling a point eventually."

Ashe let out a long sigh, eyes tipping to the ceiling for a moment. She pushed one sheet of paper closer to Severus. "I reverse-engineered the origin of these foreign elements as well as I could."

"You realise I can't possibly interpret this gibberish."

"I'm not surprised," Ashe said, watching him closely, "because I imagine very few people are likely to recognise sacrificial soul magic twisted into a blood ward."

It was hard to tell with Severus sometimes, he had very good control of himself. But she didn't miss the faint twitch, his lips quirking slightly before he again forced his face into impassiveness. "Elaborate."

"I can't tell you much in the way of specifics — ritual and blood magics are hardly my area of expertise. But, however unintentional I believe it was, these trackers were tied into the remnants, a faint echo presenting itself in Black's analysis charms." Ashe pointed at a particular cluster of equations. "These terms _appear_ to describe a familial blood ward. It's difficult to tell from this angle, but it seems to be an offensive ward, and a quite powerful one. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if it kills anyone who triggers it."

Severus eyes had gone out of focus, thinking of something else. Whatever it was, he almost looked amused. "I believe it would, yes."

"Right." Ashe's finger moved to float over another system of terms; she noticed the shake in her own hand, the weak quiver on her voice. "The _terms_ of its activation, however, are not determined by the blood ward itself. Instead, it appears to be built upon the echoes of a ritual. Sacrificial soul magic, it looks like."

This time, Severus just seemed impressed — his head had tilted somewhat, eyes slightly widened, gone almost intensely still for a few seconds. "You can determine that from Black's analysis charms."

Ashe shrugged. "It wasn't easy. I had to subtract the raw enchantment from her analysis, and reduce the terms to something recogniseable. I ended up with a lot of junk, there were unrelated elements I had to sift through to find anything relevant. By the way, is Potter a legilimens?"

His eyes widened slightly. "He is. I must say, Ashe, I'm impressed. I didn't think it was even possible to pull all that from only the elements attached to those trackers Albus had bound to the boy."

"The blood ward and the ritual, Severus."

"It's no longer of any concern."

"_Tell me._"

Severus sighed. "I have been told little, you understand, though I have reconstructed events as best I could. The Dark Lord's defeat on Samhain of Eighty-One appears to have been the result of a ritual of Lily's — invoking Adrestia, perhaps, sacrificing herself to protect her son and destroy the man who threatened him. In the aftermath, Albus cast a blood ward using the remains of the ritual as a foundation, tying it to Potter's maternal line. It has come to light recently that using Lily's ritual to define the terms of the ward resulted in serious, easily-exploitable flaws; presumably due to Black's advice, Potter has since broken the ward. It is no longer of any concern."

Ashe let out a short, harsh sigh, cursing under her breath — it didn't come out in English, but she wasn't paying enough attention to what she was saying to be certain what language it was. Rubbing at her face, she muttered, "I was afraid of that."

"I'm certain you'll get to the point of all this eventually."

"I thought you'd be furious with him."

Severus blinked, slow and blank, the only indication he was confused by the apparent change of subject. "With who for what?"

"With Albus, for that travesty with the blood ward."

That didn't seem to make the issue any clearer to him, giving her a long, flat look. "I will admit, I was surprised with his incompetence in the matter, but so far as I can determine it was an honest mistake. I cannot profess to understand the peculiarities of binding such magics in blood any better than our esteemed Headmaster — the bulk of my knowledge of blood magic involves solely internal effects, this is as far outside my area of expertise as his."

"You're looking at the wrong thing, Severus." Ashe let out another long sigh — she _really_ didn't want to have to explain this to him. She was angry enough already, and she hardly needed to give Severus more reasons to despise their Headmaster. "Lady Potter did _something_ that night. I don't know what it was, but it was certainly some sort of ritual sacrificing herself to protect her son."

"Yes...?"

"And Albus twisted the result, co-opting it to serve as a foundation for his blood ward. An ineffectual one, apparently, that makes it even _worse_."

"And...?"

Ashe sighed. "Don't take this the wrong way, Severus, but sometimes I forget you were raised among muggles. Whatever magics still clung to the boy, Lady Potter _traded her soul_ for them. And Albus in his ignorant bumbling _ruined_ it."

"There was no longer anything to ruin," Severus said, with an easy shrug that proved he had absolutely no understanding of the severity of what she was trying to say. "Whatever protection Lily had given the boy, it had been exhausted in destroying the Dark Lord. The terms of her ritual exchange were over. Albus taking advantage of its lingering echo was extending it, in a way, not ruining it — he didn't do it very _well_, true, but I'll admit his intentions were benevolent."

"_No_, Severus, it didn't—" Ashe cut off with a groan, running both hands through her hair. (Didn't matter, the mess wasn't going to get any worse.) "Severus, that is _not_ how high magic works. Either it exists, or it does not. Any _echoes_ Albus detected around the boy would have been whatever protection Lily had assured for him, _still in effect_. That the terms of the blood ward _could_ have been adapted from the ritual _proves_ it hadn't ended! In twisting what remained into a base for his blood ward, Albus was _destroying_ what Lily had _sacrificed her soul to obtain!_

"That is simply _not done_, Severus. You don't... You don't fuck with other people's sacrificial rituals. You just _don't!_ It's... It's _sacrilege_, Severus. Under the old law, when things like this were still considered, what Albus did laying that blood ward was considered akin to _murder_, betrayal of the worst kind. It is not to be done."

Severus didn't quite seem to know what to do with that. He just stared at her, for a moment, gaunt face perfectly blank, fingers tapping at the arm of his chair. Finally, after what felt like minutes, he said, "That interpretation of events hadn't occurred to me. I take it you're offended on Lily's behalf."

"I don't know exactly." The situation was so confused and terrible, Ashe wasn't certain what the hell was going on in her head. She _was_ angry at Albus, certainly — that the blood ward he'd invalidated Lily's sacrifice for had apparently been _ineffective_ only made it _worse_ — but she was angry at Evans and Black and Severus too, and she couldn't even explain to herself why. This whole thing was just entirely fucked up. "I can tell you one thing, I wish I never met that cursed Black girl." if she hadn't been handed her damn proof, she wouldn't have any reason for this...whatever this was, confused and furious and depressed...

Also, she had class in a few hours, and she hadn't slept. She hated _everything_.

Severus almost smiled. "That I can agree with. But so long as we are stuck with her, we may as well take from it what we can."

If _that_ wasn't an obvious attempt to change the subject. Ashe considered refusing to play along, try to drill into Severus's head just how _awful_ this was — he _still_ didn't seem to be taking it seriously, which was baffling, she'd thought he cared about Lily quite a bit — but she didn't want to think about it herself, and she'd never even met the girl. She really couldn't blame him. Besides, it was probably a good idea to let herself be distracted before she really did end up cursing someone. "What the hell are you talking about?"

"What did you think of her work?"

She frowned. "It was quite good. Better than mine, in fact, but I didn't have analysis charms to work off of. She would have had to compensate for the strain on the wards, but it shouldn't have been too difficult to down-tap it out — or just sink it into the reservoir, if the wards are powerful enough that might work." There _were_ advantages to having that much power available, after all.

"I did say the girl is talented. She crafted the alteration to the stadium wards that trapped the rioters at the Cup, you know."

"Yeah, I heard that rumour, but I doubt it. If she were working with a team, maybe, but no one could have channelled the power necessary to integrate those transportation wards without immolating themselves."

"Unless the cursebreaker in question used runic casting to exploit ambient magic into carrying the burden for her."

Ashe opened her mouth to object, then frowned, reflexively running the numbers in her head. "That's...possible. Maybe. Would have still been dangerous as hell, but it's possible."

His lips twisting with a smirk, Severus said, "Lyra Black has little appreciation for what we mere mortals consider impossible. She invented a _mobile gate_ last year."

"Okay, now I _know_ you're fucking with me. That's simply not possible, the magics have to be anchored into the local ambient magic."

"Unless the enchanter draws energy to create a local reservoir."

"Well, I _guess_. But the materials you would need to use to handle that kind of power, it would _hardly_ be portable. Unless you want to lug around several hundred pounds of stone or wood."

Now he _definitely_ looked amused. "She carries them around in her pockets, actually. They appear to be large sheets of silk, she simply folds them up and puts them away."

"Okay, that's just completely impossible — forget the problem of silk's low channelling threshold, gates can only be made of solid materials. They require a fixed aperture, or the gate will collapse in on itself."

"Perhaps. Though, if one were to use alchemy to fix silk as though it were stone—"

"Son of a bitch." Of course, the silk would still be _physically_ flexible, but if Black could somehow _convince_ the magic it were not... And, if they were bringing alchemy into the equation, silk's channelling threshold could easily be augmented by... It was a _practically_ onerous problem, but _theoretically_... "Son of a _bitch_. Have you seen this yourself?"

Severus shrugged. "Indirectly. Black allows her friends to use them, and even keep them temporarily, and I've analysed Zabini's memories."

Right, that would make sense. Everyone on staff knew the Zabini kid was a legilimens, and was being trained by Severus to properly control his abilities — mostly so they would know who to complain at should they suspect Zabini was abusing mind magic — and everyone in the bloody _country_ knew how the Blacks could be about the people they decided to care about. Even Ashe, who'd never even _seen_ a Black before Lyra, wasn't at all surprised by the idea that she would hand out to her friends portable gates, quite possibly a _unique invention_ with no equivalent devices _anywhere in the world_, presumably ones that led to a family property somewhere, granting a means to bypass wards into private sanctuaries held by the family for generations.

Ashe didn't really have any right to think anyone else mad, given how much of the rest of Britain thought of misters. But everything she'd heard about the Blacks still made them sound fucking _insane_. Lyra giving Zabini a _portable gate_ wasn't even that high on the list.

But, as distracting as the thought of Lyra Black _successfully_ crafting a _portable gate_ was, Ashe wasn't so helpless as to not notice when someone was trying to manipulate her. "What are you getting at, Severus?"

The younger man had the absolute gall to pretend he didn't know what she meant. "You almost sound like you're accusing me of something. I thought you simply might like to know how talented the girl is in your field."

Ashe glared at him, fingers tapping on her knee. For a brief moment, she thought over the odd, sudden turn their conversation had taken, the false casual tone of Severus's voice, the little hints he'd made of Black's particular style over the last several months. It didn't take her long to come up with a theory. An absolutely _insane_ theory, but that wasn't surprising — this was Severus Snape attempting to get her to do _something_ involving a Black student, such should be expected. "You aren't suggesting I take her as an apprentice."

"I'm sure I couldn't possibly tell you to do such a thing."

"Oh, you couldn't _tell_ me, no. That wouldn't be appropriate, would it?"

And now he had the nerve to look _amused_ — this aggravating, self-satisfied arse, honestly, why did she even put up with him. Well, okay, she knew _exactly_ why: the aggravating, self-satisfied arse-ness was amusing when directed at other people. It was just _much_ less fun when she got some of it. "No, it certainly wouldn't be."

"It's not even on my radar, Severus."

"Of course."

The condescending disbelief on his voice just had her glaring at him harder. "What, you think if you poke and prod at me over it I'll take her off your hands for you? I'm not an idiot, I know how many detentions with her you've been saddled with. If I decide to make Black my apprentice, why, she would be _my_ problem then, wouldn't she? Nice try, Severus, but I'm not biting." Even if the idea of a _portable gate_ was distractingly fascinating.

Also, it would be pretty much the easiest apprenticeship ever — Black clearly already knew enough graphic magic to qualify for a mastery, had she the connections or legitimacy to be taken seriously. Ashe would hardly have to teach her anything.

She'd probably end up learning more from Black than the other way around. From the projects Severus had just mentioned, she had a tendency to exploit alchemy and geomancy in ways that likely wouldn't have occurred to Ashe in the same situation. If nothing else, picking up a bit on her technique and thought process could be useful for her own work down the line.

And Black was _clearly_ going to make something of a name for herself, if this was the shite she was pulling off at _fourteen_. Ashe's name would be on her first few publications, and knowledge that she'd been Black's mentor would get around, which could only be good for her academic reputation. (Not to mention the Noble and Most Ancient House thing, that didn't hurt.) Learning how Black pulled this kind of mad genius off was more important to her personally, but she couldn't deny that that caché could serve her in the future, if just by allowing her to plough through unwanted political shite by weight of reputation alone.

And it was, just, _fascinating_ to think about. What other projects was Black sitting on, that Severus wasn't in a position to know about? If she could pull out impossibilities like a _portable gate_, fucking hell, it could be _anything_...

"No, stop it, shut up. I'm not doing it."

Severus raised that single damnable eyebrow of his. "I didn't say anything."

"Right, sorry, I just..." Ashe sighed, rubbing at her face some more — she was so bloody _tired_. Would breakfast be out yet? She'd like to be taking this potion now, thanks. "Just, drop it, Severus. I'm not in the market for an apprentice." No, that was a blatant lie and they both knew it. In fact, she distinctly recalled complaining to him about all the applicants she'd reviewed over the summer being horribly disappointing. To too many people, the life of an enchanter or an artificer was a profession — or worse, a _career_ — they had no respect at all for graphic magic, didn't approach it like the art it was. That practical, conventional mindset was, just, _depressing_, she couldn't even _imagine_ being stuck with one of those boring sods for however long it would take.

From what she could tell so far, her awful, traitorous brain pointed out, Lyra Black certainly couldn't be accused of being _conventional_.

"No, dammit! I'm not doing it."

"It doesn't sound like I'm the one you need to convince."

Her lips twisting with a scowl, Ashe snarled, "Go fuck yourself, Severus."

The smug shite just laughed.

* * *

_Oh hey, I actually get an excuse to use the headcanon Babbling I came up with ages ago. No way, who'd have thought. __She managed to insert herself into two little subplots this year (and onward). The first is obvious, and the second amuses me. —Lysandra_


	10. Welcome to Hogwarts — Castalia Lovegood

Cassie had, perhaps, underestimated just how complicated this would be.

It had always seemed rather peculiar to her, back when she'd been at Hogwarts, that everyone was expected to perform under the exact same Defence curriculum, regardless of their own inclinations and talents. Leave aside for the moment just how completely terrible and useless the curriculum was in the first place, it was a simple fact that different mages were more attuned to different sorts of magic, so teaching the exact same thing to everyone didn't really work out well. Especially where combat magics was concerned — in the many centuries since the wand had diffused across the world, there had been a sort of arms race accelerating the development of offensive and defensive charms, which had resulted in comparatively demanding power requirements. But, well, _obviously_, the more power required, the less likely it was someone who wasn't particularly suited to that sort of magic would be able to pull it off very well. So, whoever had formulated the Defence curriculum at Hogwarts had constructed a baseline inventory of spells and methods that people would have the greatest success with _on the average_, and proclaimed this good enough.

Which was completely fucking _absurd_. Just because the _average_ of students could perform these spells didn't mean it was the best set to teach _each one individually_ — in fact, since it was an inventory designed with no strengths to play to, it was flawed almost by definition. Cassie herself had been a very good example of this. The OWL and NEWT standards that Hogwarts taught to leaned toward dark hexes and curses, the few elemental spells taught mostly fire — which _did_ make a kind of sense, statistically people attuned to dark and/or fire magics were a plurality, though not a majority — neither of which were magics Cassie was suited to. She wasn't even certain she _could_ cast dark magic...though she'd literally never once tried, so maybe, who knows. So far as _light_ magic on the standard curriculum went? There was _one_ shield charm, a couple healing charms and counter-curses, and the patronus, of course.

That was it. Everything else taught in _all seven_ _years_ was either arithmantically neutral, or just plain dark. There wasn't a _single_ light hex or curse taught, _not one_ — despite there being many options that were _more effective_ than the ones they were taught to deal with dark creatures! Remus, at least, had had the sense to present light alternatives, but he'd actually been going off the book there, it wasn't part of the standard curriculum. Even things so basic as a bloody _revulsion jinx_ had been Remus taking the initiative, which was just _insane_.

When she'd been at Hogwarts, the density of dark charms in the curriculum, and the refusal to accept light alternatives, had resulted in her _barely_ scraping a pass in the Defence OWL and NEWT. And this was _her_ she was talking about — tell someone Cassie Lovegood had barely passed Defence in school, and they'd probably look at you like you're completely fucking insane, because it _was_, that was _absurd_.

(She'd later taken the ICW's Proficiency exam, equivalent to the NEWT, just for kicks, and gotten a literally perfect score, so. Take that for what it was worth.)

And it wasn't just her, either. The standard suite of defensive magics completely failed to take into account the natural diversity in the quality of people's spellcasting abilities. She'd had a few classmates from other light families — _magically_ light, not culturally or politically, important distinctions — who had had serious trouble performing as they were expected in Defence. Not as bad as she had, since most light mages could at least _try_ to cast dark magic (even if they couldn't manage it very well), Cassie's refusal to try was unusual. Even Fionn Ingham after her had put in a token effort, and she was pretty sure he was a literal white mage. But, even if they managed to _sort of_ learn these spells, it was undeniable that not being given a proper education in magics they would _actually be good at_ left them crippled in their ability to defend themselves, far more vulnerable than they truly needed to be.

It had seemed, at the time, that the _obvious_ solution was to divide sections up not by house, but by whether they leaned dark or light, and which sort of elemental magics they were most suited to. It hadn't occurred to her that figuring out the schedule would be _fucking tedious_.

A couple days into classes, and she'd so far managed to deal with all the first and second years — they were the largest classes by a significant margin, she'd assumed theirs would be the most difficult to figure out their schedules. And she hadn't been wrong, she didn't think. It hadn't been _too_ difficult to split both years into three groups: strong light, strong dark, and those more in the middle — that last group was the largest, enough they'd been divided along elemental affinity where feasible (which it wasn't always, strong elemental affinities were more rare). It had taken quite a long while, over the last two evenings, to find a way to slot these sections into the schedule where nobody anywhere had any conflicts. In the end, she'd had to move some of the more neutral kids into other sections, several had been swapped into other sections for other classes — this year they actually had enough students to have multiple sections for each house in a subject, so that was feasible — and even rearranged the schedule for Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors slightly, but after hours of arguing with the professors for the other core classes, they'd finally managed it.

They'd been up until one in the morning arguing about it. Cassie was already sick of this, and she still had third years and up to do. At least their class sizes were much smaller...

...which meant they hadn't multiple sections in the same house to deal with, so fixing their schedules might be _more_ difficult. Damn it.

Operating on auto-pilot, when Cassie came down to the Great Hall on the third morning — ignoring the silent stares and whispers that followed her as she passed, used to that by now — she nearly collapsed into a seat at the Ravenclaw table before remembering, _whoops_, it was the 90s and she was a professor now, ha ha. She slunk off for the high table, hoping nobody noticed her little slip.

Severus certainly did, at least, he glanced up from his coffee to give her a narrow smirk as she approached. Though it was a _very_ narrow smirk, Cassie could pick up on it pretty easily when others might not — they had been estranged for a while there, but she'd known him since he'd been _twelve_, his face was too familiar to her to be fooled easily. Sinking into the empty chair next to him (and one of the Charms apprentices, but she'd forgotten his name), she groaned, "Shut up, Sev."

His eyebrow twitched with barely-concealed annoyance. He probably wasn't used to being called that anymore — it had been Lily's nickname for him, which had quickly been taken up by their friends at Hogwarts, very few of whom he was in contact with anymore (partially due to most of them being dead now). He had tried to get them to stop doing it from the very beginning, but Cassie had always found his efforts more adorable than anything. Even now, she couldn't help smiling a bit at his displeasure.

Sev might be accustomed to cowing little children and the more pathetic of his colleagues with his intimidating dark wizard act, but if he thought he could do it with her he was _sadly_ mistaken. Cassie had stood toe-to-toe with self-styled Dark Lords and laughed in their faces. Sev's impotent frustration with her was honestly just kind of cute.

After a moment of staring at her (which Cassie ignored, scooping herself some beans and mushrooms), he said, "You know, I was going to remind you that we're adults, and should perhaps attempt to act like it, but then I remembered who I was talking to. I suspect anyone who expects you to moderate your behaviour, at all ever, will only be disappointed."

Cassie turned to him with a blinding grin. "It took nearly two decades, but I think you're finally getting it."

Letting out a put-upon sigh, Sev turned back to his (very light) breakfast. "You know, being forced to deal with you for a whole year without Lily to act as a buffer may well drive me completely mad."

"Aww, I love you too, Sev."

He twitched. Tee hee.

While she spooned a bit of her bean-mushroom mixture up onto a piece of toast, Cassie reached for her magic, carefully forming energy into the shape of the proper spell. She set down her spoon, and tapped the table; in a blink, Cassie's empty tea cup was switched with Sev's coffee. He noticed almost right away, hand reaching out to snatch it back, but Cassie was quicker, plucking the steaming cup off the table even as she slapped his hand away. She took a slow, casual sip, then met his steely glare with a soft, absent smile she and Xeno (and Luna, indirectly) had copied from Grandma Rowan. "Thanks for the coffee, you're such a sweetheart."

For a moment, Cassie almost thought he would snap at her in a manner far less dignified than he seemed to prefer these days — he'd had quite a temper when they'd been kids, it was honestly strange seeing him so still and quiet. But he managed to collect himself, a note of heat on his voice but still with that same slow calm he tried to keep up. "You could have gotten your own, you know."

"Yes, but the elves brew this for you special. That shite out on the table is weak and awful."

"You could ask them for some for yourself."

"Or you could just ask for a refill — I'm sure you have the poor little things terrified into compliance by now." She was being sarcastic, of course, Sev had been perfectly decent to the elves when they'd been students, didn't see why that should have changed.

By the snort of laughter from McGee on Sev's other side, she probably thought Cassie was serious. (Not surprised, McGee had always had a very low opinion of Sev...and Cassie too, actually.) In a false-casual tone, she said, "You might want to be careful with the bickering, you two. You wouldn't want to give the students ideas."

"Oh, Sev's not my type, he learned long ago to his great disappointment."

Sev gave her a flatly unimpressed look. "I see your inflated opinion of yourself remains intact."

"So, I take it we're pretending you _didn't_ ask me out in fifth year." Cassie heard multiple professors try to hide their amusement, most of them badly.

"I did not!" he snarled, mortified. Ha, she'd managed to crack his silly cold mask already, that hadn't even been very hard.

He sort of had, though. Granted, only _sort of_ — he hadn't meant it in the way how she'd said it implied, and he hadn't gotten as far as actually asking. In her fifth year (his fourth), he'd been invited to one of those ridiculously fancy functions the nobles held over the holidays, and needed a date for appearances' sake if nothing else, had been laying hints in advance of actually asking her. (Which, in retrospect, was a _very_ strange choice — she was technically a pureblood, and her mother was an Ollivander, a prominent noble family...but _Cassie_ was a bloody _Lovegood_. No idea what he'd been thinking with that.) But, before he could get that far, she'd headed him off by talking about how she was going to be spending the holidays at the commune, and had also made it very clear that she was very, _very_ gay, in case it wasn't just for appearances' sake.

Which was actually the _only_ reason Sev wasn't her type, if he were a woman she'd be all over that. Dark witches who _pretended_ to be all cold and hard and fuck off were perhaps the most fun to get under their skin — both metaphorically and literally.

But this wasn't the time to go _too_ far to humiliate Sev in front of his colleagues. It was only the first week, after all, she had the rest of the year to take the silly boy's dignified image down a few pegs. "My mistake, must have you mixed up with someone else." There, saving face while also an obvious lie everybody would see through instantly, that would do. Cassie threw back the rest of Sev's coffee, picked up the remains of her breakfast and popped up to her feet. "Now, excuse me, I have to go get ready for the third-years."

Cassie swept away, a few of the nearer staff members twittering in her wake, Sev's glare hot and heavy on the back of her head.

These days, Defence was still taught in the same room it had been in her time, a comparatively small space with an attached office (which opened up on the other side into the hall on the fifth floor most of the staff apartments were on), a short distance off of the Grand Staircase on the third floor. It would be, Cassie already knew, insufficient for her purposes. At the very least, the first- and second-year classes would be too large to fit in one room...though she'd already split those years into smaller sections, which would make sure they would _fit_, but also made her own schedule more complicated. If she didn't have Stacey around she'd probably be fucked.

It was a boring, standard classroom, rows of simple desks with a few bookshelves and cabinets along the walls but otherwise completely absent any sort of decoration at all whatsoever. Which did make sense — with the constant rotation of staff through the decades, nobody would have stayed long enough to impart much character into the space. The room was perfectly fine, if boring, for standard theory lectures, for practising healing and divination spells and the like, but was _woefully_ inappropriate for the more dramatic offensive and defensive magics, much less actual duelling practice.

Cassie _had_ tracked down the old duelling club chambers, which had looked exactly as she remembered if not in quite the same place. Things in Hogwarts had a tendency to move around a little, especially when not in use — because, the duelling ring _wasn't_ in use, which was stupid, Cassie had been in the duelling club not that long ago but it didn't exist anymore. Which she had already known, since Hogwarts had ceased sending teams to the ICW student tournaments, but it was still very odd.

Apparently, Dumbledore was too busy with his political work to do his bloody job, so he'd passed off a fair number of his duties as headmaster off to McGee...which had then had her overburdened, so she'd delegated some of _her_ responsibilities to Filius, who'd suddenly found himself too busy to keep the club going. She planned to see if she could get it started up again — even if Filius stayed busy once she was gone, there was no reason they couldn't leave most of the management to the students, with a bit of careful organisation.

But anyway, the duelling ring didn't seem quite so abandoned as it was supposed to be, and Stacey agreed it looked like someone had been sneaking in to practise on their own. Which they both heartily approved of, since the official Defence class was fucking useless. Interestingly, McGee hadn't gotten any warning someone had been breaking in, so they must have been circumventing the security on the door with a ward gate of some kind (though they'd cleaned up after themselves before leaving for summer). Cassie suspected Lyra Black was involved somehow.

Ah shite, Black would be with her fourth-years this afternoon. That was going to be uncomfortable.

When she did get up to the theory classroom — which she'd temporarily expanded for this first week, today holding twice the desks it usually did — still some minutes ahead of the third-years, Cassie wasn't surprised to find Stacey already waiting for her, leaning against the teacher's desk. She was made up somewhat more modestly than usual — a full-length dress in golds and leafy greens, complete with long cloth gloves vanishing up her sleeves, wavy black hair poking out from under a dense, heavy scarf a somewhat darker green — which was less out of actual modesty and more for safety concerns. They had warded the windows against certain bands of sunlight (little visible difference, most wouldn't notice) on their first night here, but risking sickness and death when it wasn't necessary would just be silly. If she did end up exposed to direct sunlight, she could pull the scarf over her face and hopefully get to safety before she caught too much. Because, Stacey was a vampire, see.

Cassie had known she would need an assistant to get through her class schedule — she would sometimes have multiple sessions of Defence going on at the same time, so it _was_ necessary — and getting someone who could use dark magics had seemed the obvious thing to do. She'd come up with a list of suitable people who she'd actually trust with the kids, and hadn't outside commitments that would get in the way, and Stacey had been the first on her list.

The rest of the staff knew she'd brought an assistant with her — one who wouldn't need her own room because they were shagging, which surprised no one, she had a reputation by now — but she'd _maybe_ left out the vampire part. She very much doubted Dumbledore would approve, the paranoid, racist old bastard. Instead, she'd claimed Stacey had a metabolic condition that worsened with exposure to sunlight (technically true), which also came with particular dietary restrictions (that one was a lie), and that she wasn't much for small talk (also technically true), so she wouldn't come down for meals and wasn't likely to be seen wandering the castle or the grounds much. The staff had made noises of sympathy and concern, seemingly buying it. Sev had given her a long, suspicious glare, so _he_ might have put together what she was saying-without-saying, but if he had he'd kept his mouth shut about it.

Not that Stacey was any kind of threat to anyone, really. She was actually a sweetie, as hard as that might be for British people to believe, by weight of the opinion they had of her race alone. Baldly lying about her had seemed the thing to do.

(Dumbledore would find out before too long, and he would be _very_ annoyed. They'd deal with that when it happened.)

Stacey, leaning against a corner of the teacher's desk at the back, fixed Cassie a crooked smile, face half-shadowed by her scarf. "That didn't take very long."

"Yes, well." Cassie shrugged. "I'm running late this morning. And got into a little snit with Sev, had to leave while I still had the last word."

"Making friends already, I see."

"We were already friends, much as he might deny it. And hey, I resent the implication I wasn't! I'm very friendly, you know."

"_Si dici accussì_, _amuri_."

Cassie didn't actually speak Italian, but she didn't have to to know she was being mocked. Being a _very mature adult_, her only response was to stick out her tongue.

While waiting for the kids to catch up, Cassie flipped through the papers on her desk, going over what she had on the third-years one last time. Remus actually _wasn't_ a complete waste of space and had written a little bit about each of the kids, what their particular strengths and issues were, preparing for the person who'd inevitably take over after him. It wasn't _perfect_, Remus had his own biases, but it was better than nothing.

His reports on Luna and the Weasley girl were just kind of funny.

Eventually, the third-years started trickling in, a steady stream mostly heading straight here from breakfast, stragglers wandering in a few minutes behind the bulk of the class, until forty-odd kids were crammed into the one room. (These kids would have been born in the last year of the war, if it weren't for immigrants and a few muggleborns that'd slipped through the cracks there'd barely be thirty of them.) Cassie waited until the official start of class, and then a couple minutes more, just in case anyone had fallen behind.

She yanked the door closed with an open hand — the little wandless trick had the class instantly falling silent. "Right, then," she said, propping herself up against the front of her desk, "we might as well get this disaster started. You all remember the Headmaster's reluctant introduction a few days ago, but I'm Cassie Lovegood. In case you're wondering, yes, _that_ Cassie Lovegood — champion at the Geneva Open four times running now, sixth-highest lifetime ranking with the International Competitive Duelists' Association, and also there were a few so-called Dark Lords I've offed, I've honestly forgotten most of their names. None of them were as bad as Voldemort—" She restrained the urge to roll her eyes at the way the kids jumped or gasped or squealed. "—or whatever you want to call the melodramatic arse, but not exactly pushovers, any of them. Well, except Kulushan, he was a bloody lightweight, so far out of his league it wasn't even funny.

"Anyway, you'll be stuck with me this year for Defence." By the looks on most of the kids' faces, they didn't really think it was an imposition. Which, not surprised, they'd hardly had very impressive professors lately. "Note I say _Defence_, not _Defence Against the Dark Arts_ — that name is very, _very_ silly. For one thing, most of what's taught in the standard curriculum has nothing to do with the Dark Arts, mostly basic self-defence. And exactly what qualifies as a 'Dark Art'," she said, with finger-quotes, "varies country to country, but knowledge of them is, by definition, restricted. So, as you would expect, the people who know much about them are going to be relatively few — should you have to defend yourself, chances are the person looking to hurt you is going to be an ordinary witch or wizard using standard, mundane magics. Even the bloody Death Eaters, very few of them actively practised any of the Dark Arts, the rank and file were mostly ordinary mages. Generally speaking, the only people who have to worry about facing _actual_ Dark Arts are Aurors, or crazies like me.

"Did you have a question, Mister...?"

The squirrelly little boy unsubtly flapping his hand in the air dropped it. "Creevey, ma'am. What are the Dark Arts, exactly? Nobody ever says, they just say they're bad."

"That's actually a very good question, Mister Creevey." The boy beamed at her, a handful of others in the room darkly glaring at the back of his head. (Which was silly, it _was_ a good question.) "Unfortunately, there isn't a quick and easy answer to that. To put it as briefly as possible, the term 'Dark Arts' refers to any kind of magic the use of which is either restricted or forbidden under the law. Other than that, they hold very little in common. Some of these magics are harmful, yes, some of them morally reprehensible. But some of them _aren't_. Some of them are completely harmless, banned for reasons economic or superstitious, and some of them are actually beneficial — blood magic, for example, can be used maliciously, but is also one of the fundamental skillsets any capable Healer will learn, and a very powerful one. The best healing magics, in fact, are blood magics. This is why blood magics are _restricted_ in Britain, but not banned outright.

"Okay," she said, clapping her hands, "we should get moving along before I get too far off track. That might happen sometimes, fair warning, I've never actually taught before. Never even held a steady job, to be honest, should be fun. Standing next to me is Anastasia _di Missina_ — or 'Miss Stacey', if you like — who will be assisting me in classes." Stacey gave the kids a cheerful little wave. "Since I'm so heavily attuned to light magic I won't be able to even demonstrate any dark spells, Stacey will be taking over there.

"Most of what we're doing this year can be divided into three categories. One, theory of Dark Arts — not enough to actually _perform_ any of them, just enough to recognise the more dangerous ones in use. If you _do_ see anyone using any of these," Cassie said, leaning forward a little, "you _run_. Do not try to stop them, do not try to fight, you _run_. I simply can't teach you enough to counter any of these rarer magics, but I _can_ teach you enough to know when it's time to get the fuck away.

"The other two will mostly be practical exercises. One of them involves magics not directly useful in combat — healing, some simple divination, detecting harmful poisons and enchantments, that sort of thing. Yes, Miss...?"

"Abbott. What does divination have to do with self-defence? There is a Divination _class_..."

"And there's a _Charms_ class, and yet you learn plenty of charms in Defence." Cassie shrugged. "There are a few simple divinations that can be very useful. There are some divining spells that will help you find your way if you're lost, or will identify harmful objects or substances, or will tell you if you're moving toward danger. With practice, you'll know if someone is lying or if they have harmful intent, just by feeling them out — it does take some effort to learn to do that all the time without the aid of a focus of some kind, but it's not particularly difficult. Those of you who have particular talent will find you can divine _in the middle of a duel_, to give you a little bit of a warning if you're going to dodge the wrong way, if the spell you're thinking of using will be counterproductive. There are all kinds of advantages to working on your sensitivity, often unpredictable. Those of you in the Divination class will have a little bit of an advantage here — from what I can tell, Shirazi actually knows what she's talking about — but it's still a basic skill to protect yourself, I think.

"Right, and the third category, combat magic. This means, both offensive and defensive magics — hexes and curses and their counters, shield spells, nuisance charms, everything. Not just the _casting_ of them, but we'll also be practising the _use_ of them. On the ground floor there's an old arena, used by the dueling club back in my time, I'll be showing you where it is next week. Around half of our classes will be practical, on those days we'll meet down there instead." Unsurprisingly, the vast majority of the class looked excited at the prospect of so many practical lessons — no thirteen-year-old liked being shut up in a classroom, firing hexes at each other was much more fun. And also good practice, too many people ended up in situations they needed to defend themselves in with solely _theoretical_ knowledge, fucking stupid.

A handful of students, mostly Ravenclaws and Slytherins, had their hands raised. "The days of practical lessons will be posted on the boards in all your common rooms, and you'll be reminded here the day before." All the hands went down. "All right, then.

"Now, in this third category, you have your basic charms, which can be either arithmantically neutral, light, or dark. These are your bread and butter, can be whipped out quickly and easily, most spells you use in a fight will be one of these. Generally speaking, though this is not _always_ true, a light or dark spell beats a neutral one — the emotional component gives it added power, as well as qualities that make them harder to shield or counter. For this reason _most_ of the spells we'll be working on will be light or dark. Especially with your particular age group, it helps, since it's easier to get out spells that are more useful, shields that are harder to crack, hexes that are harder to block. The advantage is _less_ important with adults, but when you're younger it just might give you that edge you need to get out of trouble.

"We'll also be working on some elemental magics. These have a lot of uses, far too many for me to list here. In a fight, these are your heavy-hitters — they take more time to prepare, usually, but are more powerful to match it, and much more difficult to deal with, tend to completely ignore the standard shield charms. An effective strategy should you need to defend yourself is to harry whoever it is with a bevy of quick hexes and such — if you're lucky, you might get a good binding hex in, giving you time to get away — but the goal is to distract them long enough to make a window to get out a _very_ distracting elemental spell, which they'll have to deal with, giving you cover to escape. This will be helpful not only against older students who might be bullying you, but adult mages with whatever nefarious intentions they might have — even people like were at that riot lately, or Death Eaters, if they make trouble again — and this is even good against most dangerous creatures. Hell, I met a wizard who did something similar to take down a _dragon_, it's a _very_ effective basic strategy.

"But, to do this well, we'll need to split you up by your personal magical affinities. Everyone stand up."

This was the third time Cassie had done this, but the previous two had been with larger groups of students. While that did mean it wouldn't take _nearly_ as long to divine the talents of each of the kids one by one, it also meant they probably didn't have enough to justify more than two sessions — which made her schedule easier, she guessed, but it also meant the sessions would be less specialised, so her attention would be divided. Eh, nothing to be done about it. Cassie cast an illusion, a single glowing line, splitting the room in half, then the privacy charms to isolate her and whatever kid she was examining from the rest of the class. These things could be very personal sometimes, it would be potentially cruel to air it out in front of their peers, and unnecessarily so.

Like making _children_ encounter a _boggart_ for the _first time_ in front of _twenty other kids_. Seriously, Cassie had been under the impression Remus wasn't a _heartless bastard_, what the fuck had happened there...

Good thing she did, too. While the point was to determine what elemental affinities the kids might have — she could feel out how far they leaned light or dark just standing near them, she didn't need divining magics for that — she also discovered a latent legilimens and five Seers (counting Luna), which weren't things people normally liked to advertise. And telling people where they stood also led to a couple...uncomfortable conversations.

As with last time, there were a handful of dark mages that were _very adamant_ that they _must_ be light, and vice versa. The worst cases, Morisette seemed on the verge of tears at the suggestion that she was an _evil awful dark witch_, and the Carrow girls had clearly gotten propaganda growing up that made the idea of light magic somewhat distasteful. Cassie tried not to show her frustration too much — honestly, it was _not_ a big deal, people got far too worked up over these things — managed to get through these talks without too much trouble. She did have practice with the lower years now.

Luna and Weasley's turns were a bit odd, perhaps unsurprisingly. Luna had a strong affinity for storm magics, which Cassie had _not_ seen coming — it just seemed too..._wild_, for her. Of course, Cassie didn't know how much of her understanding of Luna's character was tainted by Luna _trying_ to make herself align with Gelach, which clearly was not going so well. In fact, there was an odd strain of interference shot through her soul, which could _not_ be comfortable to live with, even just moment to moment. Girl should really get on that rededication thing.

Weasley, on the other hand, was...concerning. Despite the shadow of the shattered horcrux still hanging over her — though much less obvious than it'd been before, mostly subsumed by now — she was so deeply of the light her magic was warm to the touch, perhaps the most strongly attuned in the room (after Luna and Cassie herself, of course). Also with an intense affinity for fire magics, which was also not a surprise. But, Cassie didn't know, she just felt so...raw, wild and desperate, just on the edge of going completely...

Cassie knew, without knowing how — insight from Artemis, perhaps? but that was a white mage thing... — that little Ginevra Weasley needed personal attention. Not like from a mind healer, she wouldn't take well to that and she _was_ clearly dealing with her trauma...but in a way that could lead into unhealthy, self-destructive obsession. One-on-one, more personal training could forge her into the powerful light warrior she had the natural talent and drive to become, while simultaneously giving her focus and attachment that could prevent her from going off the rails entirely. Cassie had seen this sort of mania before, without something to keep her grounded it could go very, _very_ badly...

And Cassie couldn't give it to her. Her schedule was far too full, she simply didn't have the time to give Weasley the attention she needed to not, potentially, _lose her bloody mind_. Not to mention, Cassie wasn't particularly suited to Weasley's needs. She meant...her problems were mostly _emotional_ problems, which were, to be honest, almost entirely foreign to Cassie. She'd never gone through any kind of trauma, really, or even any significant personal difficulty, it'd never been a struggle for her to be what she was, it had always seemed just...the natural thing to do? She'd seen such things in other people, but...

Fuck. She _really_ needed to do something about this. Maybe Sev would know someone suitable? Hmm.

Anyway, before too long, she had the class divided in half. She explained to one half that they'd all be put into one section — yes, all four houses mixed together, she didn't care — and they would be getting a broader menu of neutral spells, with a few of the milder light or dark spells to augment the standard set, still more than they would have learned with a professor actually following the official curriculum. After experimenting with light and dark magic for a while, they might find that one came to them much easier than the other. If they wanted to, Cassie would help them attune themselves more fully to one or the other, after which they would be moved to the more polarised section.

But, she warned, this was not a decision to be taken lightly — attuning one's magic to one pole or the other did come with significant advantages, but there were _also_ downsides, and the process couldn't be easily reversed. (Well, it _could_, actually, but that was high magic, and she shouldn't go blabbing about that to thirteen-year-olds.) While mages declared for neither light nor dark did have greater difficulty casting the more powerful spells of either pole, they _could_ still do it, and could cast either without the unpleasant interference that a light mage would experience trying to cast a dark spell, or vice versa — in sacrificing a little bit of power in a single pole, undeclared mages had an advantage in diversity of options. Not to mention there could often be unpredictable psychological and social consequences to attuning oneself to the light or dark, yeah, it was a _very_ big deal, Cassie would only consider helping people go through it who were very, _very_ certain it was what they wanted to do.

Once they all seemed to be on the same page, Cassie told them they'd be getting their adjusted schedule in a day or two, then dismissed them. Then she turned to the other half of the room, and gave them a very similar speech, the larger picture differing only in the details.

There weren't enough people in their year to have separate sections prioritising neutral, light, _and_ dark magics, so those leaning strong enough to either pole had to be put together. They would still be learning some of the standard defence charms — there were a lot of jinxes and hexes and things that were plain useful, though the shields were mostly shitty, and they should still know the common counters even if they didn't need the curses they were for — but most of the spells they were learning would be light or dark.

That is, light _or_ dark — they would need to be able to recognise the spells their opposites were learning, and would probably be the targets of the hexes and things plenty of times in practice, but they would _not_ be expected to cast them. Forcing a light mage to cast dark magic, or vice versa, could be very unpleasant (even painful) and draining, and all too frequently led to frustration and anger, and in the worst cases even _serious_ depression. Cassie wouldn't stop anyone from experimenting with their opposite if they _really_ wanted to, but they weren't expected to do so, and only focusing on one wouldn't be leaving themselves vulnerable, she _had_ taken the time to plan out a full set for both light and dark. Hell, Cassie herself was an _excellent_ example of how you didn't need both to be completely awesome, it was fine.

She included an anecdote about how Lily had used both light and dark magics, eventually attuning herself to _both_ sides simultaneously, though Cassie didn't recommend it. Her dual dedication had had _strange_ effects — her ability to use neutral charms had been seriously crippled, for example, she'd spent _weeks_ re-learning basic first-year charms (_right_ before her OWLs) — and the process itself had been extremely painful and _extremely_ risky, she'd come terrifyingly close to forever damaging her ability to cast magic at all. (In fact, if the Powers hadn't liked her so much she might well have accidentally reduced herself to a squib, but Cassie didn't tell the kids that part.) Take it from someone who'd known her, Lily Evans had been _insane_, very entertaining and one of Cassie's favourite people she'd ever met, but still _completely mad_, yeah, _maybe_ not a good idea to try it themselves, just a thought.

There was far too much smug amusement on certain purebloods' faces at Cassie calling the infamous muggleborn ritualist insane, no, that wouldn't do _at all_. So, she added a quick aside about how back when they'd been students they'd sometimes gone out into the forest to _ride unicorns_ — yes, unicorns _would_ let you ride them, assuming they didn't _stab you to death_ for getting too close, don't try it if you don't want holes poked through you — and at one Samhain Revel she'd personally seen Lily _skip up and hug a manifestation of Persephone_ — Lily had been a bit high on the magic, and probably hadn't realised what she'd been doing in the moment, but _still_, what the _fuck_. Yeah, completely _insane_ also meant completely _awesome_ — and she meant in the literal sense, inspiring wonder and/or fear — Cassie simply didn't recommend the Lily Evans method to thirteen-year-olds with any sense of self-preservation whatsoever.

_That_ wiped the smirks off their faces pretty damn well. Tee hee.

Once she had the kids at the appropriate mixture of informed, intimidated, and excited, they were dismissed, free for the rest of the period. Cassie was feeling rather antsy from just standing and _talking_ for so long — especially with the looming prospect of having a _real job_, she'd be doing this for _months on end_ — so Stacey shadow-walked them down to the dueling ring. (Being dragged through shadows might be uncomfortable for Cassie, though she was getting used to it, but it was far _less_ uncomfortable than it would be for Stacey to get minor sun exposure walking down, even taking the proper precautions.) They played around for over an hour, not really sparring so much as dancing, less aiming to win and more moving and casting magic for the sheer fun of it.

After they'd been at it for a while — her blood rushing, giggling like a silly schoolgirl — Cassie had to remind herself that students had apparently been using this room on their own time. Jumping Stacey and fucking right here and now would probably be a bad idea.

She _did_ manage to control herself, but she was still far too keyed up to deal with _adults_, and _small-talk_. But that was fine, she just popped down to the kitchens with Stacey for lunch instead.

They got back up to the classroom ahead of the students, long enough for Cassie to skip back up to her office to swap Remus's notes on the third-years for the fourth-years. (This time, his thoughts on Black, Zabini, and Granger were bloody hilarious.) She flipped through the files one last time, preparing herself for giving the same lecture for the _fourth_ time — Cassie did _not_ like routine, it made her itch.

And, of course, this class had _two_ black mages in it, according to Luna. The fourth-years certainly wouldn't be boring, at least, she could be grateful for that much.

The class tromped in before too long, arriving far more clumped together than the morning class. (Which made sense, they'd all be coming straight up from lunch.) Cassie watched, silently waiting for the last few stragglers. Usually, the four houses would split themselves up — the competition between the houses the school's culture engendered quickly led to hard divides in the student body, friendships that formed between houses were actually somewhat rare. The problem was less pronounced in earlier years, but by third and fourth the split was always obvious. But, curiously, Cassie noticed a clump of mixed-house students sitting and chatting together. Mostly Gryffindors and Slytherins, but there was a Ravenclaw and a few Hufflepuffs hanging about too.

Among them, Cassie recognised Lyra Black from her glimpse at the riot — though it'd taken her a moment to be sure, without the blood and ash on her face — a girl who was practically a clone of Ailbhe at that age — that would be little Daphne, presumably, last time Cassie had seen her she'd been four — and a smirking dark-skinned boy she assumed must be Zabini. And Harry Potter, of course, she wasn't about to miss him, the way his picture got bloody everywhere.

Hmm. That was interesting.

Anyway, she slammed the door closed with the quick flick of a freeform charm, started in on her introduction once again. There were rather more interruptions than there had been this morning — especially from Granger, but Remus's notes had primed Cassie to expect endless questions from this one — but that was fine, she didn't actually need the whole double period to get through it all. Besides, they were good questions, it was fine.

Though, Black had to make a bloody nuisance of herself when Cassie introduced Stacey. Not that Cassie could really judge about making a nuisance of herself, not with what she'd been like at that age (and still was now), but it was still irritating. Cassie had briefly explained who Stacey was and why she was here, same as always, but before she could move on, Black blurted out, "Does Dumbledore know you brought a vampire into his little fiefdom?"

The effect that announcement had on the rest of the class was predictable — in that they clearly didn't know whether they should believe Black, but still decided it was worth it to shoot Stacey a panoply of suspicious, fearful looks. Cassie sighed. "No, I didn't tell Dumbledore. Obviously, he's an idiot about these things. But you don't have to worry about Stacey, it's fine."

"Oh, I wasn't worried, I just—"

But Black didn't finish whatever she was saying, drowned out by the shouting of the rest of the class over the realisation they were in the _same room_ with a _deadly vampire_. Rolling her eyes, Cassie threw a pacification charm over the room — a few of the dark-leaning kids flinched away from the light magic, but everyone obediently fell silent anyway, even the ones who resisted it. "I understand your education in this subject has been patchy and inconsistent, and Stacey's people haven't the greatest reputation in Britain — and much of the rest of Europe, honestly — but there's no good reason to lose your heads over this. Does anyone here know the difference between the two different classes of vampires? Yes, Miss Granger."

"Er..." Granger hesitated for a moment, biting at her lip, glancing between Cassie and Stacey. Probably something she wasn't certain of, then. "There was some...disagreement, between different sources I found on the subject, but I _think_ the main difference is there are some who were simply born the way they are, and the others used ritual blood magic to change themselves."

"My people," Stacey said, still sweetly smiling despite the turn in the conversation, "call the latter kind abominations. They are not like us, in many important ways. They literally _drink_ blood, for one thing."

"And you don't?"

"Of course not." Stacey sounded mildly disgusted at the thought. "No, we burn it."

"Er..."

The kids didn't quite seem to know what to think about this — at least the mood in the room seemed to have lessened from frightened to confused, Cassie could work with that. "Stacey's people are, like veela and lilin, the descendants of people who fundamentally altered themselves through ritual magic thousands of years ago. She was born the way she is, to parents who were also born the way they are, who had her the same way humans do. Stacey's people are sensitive to sunlight — the windows in here are warded — and they're naturally talented with shadow magic, in much the same way as the other kind, but they eat normal food like anyone else. They don't drink blood, but burn it and inhale the fumes, in a ritual that only works for them — high magic of some kind, I assume — the only real result of which is to halt aging. Well, it also does weird things to their magic, I guess, but still.

"The human-born vampires you've heard about use a ritual that was inspired by what they knew of Stacey's people, but got a few things wrong. They tend not to be very nice. Stacey's people, yes, there have been a few less than pleasant individuals over the centuries, but they're just people like everyone else. You wouldn't condemn the entirety of humanity just because Voldemort was a gigantic arsehole, would you?"

Of course, she was underselling the differences between vampires like Stacey and ordinary humans. Much like the so-called 'abominations', they moved unnaturally quickly — though they didn't get the unnerving stillness, since they were still physically normal in most ways — and were rather tougher, if not so much as their quasi-undead imitators. And there were psychological and cultural differences, mostly involving what the average person would consider a peculiar fixation on blood. It was common in symbols and idioms they used, no matter where they lived or what language they spoke, a lot of formal agreements and relationships involved mixing their blood in this interesting low ritual they'd been practising for millennia. Some of their traditions were rather messy, but Cassie honestly thought it was fascinating.

And, well, Stacey wasn't being _entirely_ honest when she said her people didn't drink blood at all ever, it simply wasn't appropriate to go telling fourteen-year-olds about their sexual habits. Every single vampire Cassie had ever met who had been willing to talk about it (which may or may not be representative) had been into bloodplay to greater or lesser degrees — it was hard to tell how common it was exactly, but certainly out of proportion with ordinary humans. But it was just a little bit, for fun, definitely not what most people assumed.

Thankfully, the class seemed mostly mollified by that — still somewhat suspicious, uncertain, but at least not terrified of even the idea of Stacey anymore, which was good enough to be getting on with. Cassie considered asking them to keep this to themselves, but ended up just moving on. Having a vampire assisting in Defence was the sort of thing kids were going to talk about, she couldn't stop them. Stacey had known from the beginning it would inevitably get out, she'd decided to take the risk of coming to Britain anyway.

It _could_ have gone a lot worse. Frankly, Cassie was just relieved none of the kids had run out screaming.

That minor diversion aside, feeling out the class and splitting them up into two sections was when things got really complicated. This was the most interesting class she'd gone through so far, no doubt about that.

Black, despite _obviously_ being a black mage — Luna had been right about this one, at least — had been relatively simple to deal with, if...unnerving. She'd apparently made herself shadowkin at some point which, okay, that was a bit insane, but high magic did insane things sometimes, whatever. And, there was a _depth_ to her magic that was simply _not_ normal, even in black or white mages, something seeming to stretch far past herself, out and...

_No_. Was Lyra Black an Avatar? Cassie had only met one before, but she kind of felt... Huh.

Anyway, as _strange_ as Black was, their little talk actually went very smoothly. She was _obviously_ dark, though perhaps not so immutably as Cassie would expect of a black mage (but, Avatar, so that made sense), so they didn't have to linger on that. Black seemed surprised at the revelation that she had an affinity for storm magics, but had easily accepted it, flounced off for the proper half of the room without argument.

The first real difficulty was with the Bones girl, who had a _strong_ untapped talent for divination — specifically, necromancy. Which wasn't a surprise, exactly, the Boneses had once been known for their ability to speak with the dead. (Amelia had it too, but less so.) The difficulty was that Bones was _very_ strongly suited to spiritual necromancy — she was aligned closely enough with Death Cassie was _certain_ she'd start hearing whispers before too long, and without any conscious decision to embrace the talent on her part — but, from the way Bones reacted when Cassie told her as much, she'd had _absolutely no idea_. That...was going to be a problem.

Cassie rubbed her eyes for a moment, before promising the poor kid she'd track down someone she could talk to, and shuffled her off to the unaligned side of the room.

Things went mostly smoothly from that point, save for Cornfoot being displeased with the suggestion he was an _evil dark wizard_, until Cassie got up to Granger, who she found herself hesitating on. She did have a significant natural affinity for dark magic, but her aura was weirdly neutral — she'd never actually _used_ it, and had never declared one way or the other. Which was...sort of odd. She meant, it wasn't at all strange for a muggleborn to not have any affinity one way or the other, but Granger _did_ have one, just an _untapped_ one, which was very strange. Maybe...something heritable from a squib line, but...had never been properly primed, since she hadn't grown up around magic? Hmm.

Cassie would normally have put her in the unaligned section without another thought — in fact, she nearly did before she was suddenly struck with doubt. It _seemed_ the right thing to do, but... Well, Granger might not have developed the talent at all, but it _was_ there, and what was the point of this but to develop the kids' talents? She was unaligned at the moment, but it felt proper to give her the tools to start down the path.

Besides, it was obvious Granger and Black were close, they'd probably be happier in a class together anyway.

Things got a little weird again when she got to Longbottom — the boy was _obviously_ an earth-speaker but, like Bones, had absolutely no idea. Whether his situation was worse than Bones's or not was sort of a tossup. Longbottom's was rather less unnerving, since it wasn't like he was going to get dead people randomly whispering into his subconscious or showing up in his dreams or anything, but Bones had at least _heard_ of her family's old talent. It didn't seem like Longbottom had any idea what his was.

But, thankfully, Cassie could come up with a few earth-speakers off the top of her head, she sent Longbottom off to the unaligned side of the room with a promise she'd get him someone he could talk with when it came to feeling the land and getting plants to do things just by singing at them. (The boy had seemed fascinated with it once he knew what the ability actually _was_, so, hadn't gone too poorly, just frustrating.)

When she got to Nott, Cassie felt confident she'd spotted Luna's second black mage — not that he truly was, or at least not yet. His magic did have the intense, playful feel of someone who'd spent enough time around high magic, so it was a good bet this was the boy attached to Mystery Luna had told her about. The difficulty dealing with Nott was that the boy seemed almost terrified of her. He was concealing it well — she assumed he had practice at it, which was an unsettling thought — but, empath, couldn't hide these things from Lovegoods. If she had to guess, Nott was in the process of _becoming_ a black mage (hence Luna's suggestion), and had perhaps gotten some peculiar ideas about what Cassie herself would think about that.

Cassie was aware that among certain subsets of dark mages she had an absolutely _atrocious_ reputation — she wouldn't be surprised if Nott was under the impression Cassie would messily murder him just for being what he was. So, since they were under privacy spells anyway, Cassie went ahead and told him that she _did not care_ about his relationship with the Dark, and she _liked_ Mystery, actually, so if he could stop being so silly and get over to his side of the room, that'd be great.

The dumbfounded look on the boy's face was _priceless_.

And not long later she came to Potter, who was apparently _very much_ his mother's son. Not personality-wise, of course, and he was clearly quite powerful for his age — as talented as she'd been, Lily had always been rather on the weak end — and he'd picked up the Black self-transfigurative ability from his father, and was even a legilimens, which... Actually, he might have gotten that from Lily — thinking back on it, it was _very_ possible Lily had been a latent mind mage who simply hadn't the power necessary to fuel the talent, Cassie hadn't known to recognise such things at the time. Like much of the rest of the class, Potter didn't lean significantly toward the dark or light, but _unlike_ everyone else...

Was Lily's dual dedication _heritable?_ Potter didn't have the _strong_ alignment toward both poles that his mother had, but the _potential_ was there, a peculiar ambivalent feel to his magic — Cassie _knew_, instinctively, that he could exploit both light and dark without needing the ritual Lily had designed, it was _inborn_, which was just...

And here Lily was impressing Cassie from _beyond the grave_. That just wasn't bloody fair, that girl, _honestly_...

It took a little longer than necessary to explain to Potter that he'd be going into the polarised class but, unlike the rest of his peers, would be learning both light _and_ dark. She'd gotten somewhat off-track explaining what Lily had done, that she'd somehow passed on her _insane_ (but _awesome_) magical ambivalence on to him, which had seemed to help somewhat. It _hadn't_ helped when she accidentally let slip that she knew so much about what Lily had done because they'd been lovers at the time — he asked if they _were dating_, which was _adorable_ — and the realisation that he was talking to someone who used to have sex with his mother on a regular basis had apparently made him _very_ uncomfortable, he'd fled in short order after that.

Cassie couldn't quite hold in a giggle. Silly boy, to get so awkward over that — did he have any idea how much Lily had screwed around? Probably not, come to think of it, who would have told him?

_No_, Cassie, do _not_ pester the poor boy with completely inappropriate stories about his parents, _bad_ girl...

The next odd one was the very last. Zabini was clearly a legilimens — _and_ an empath, which was just overkill — and there was an odd tang about him that felt rather like shadow magic, except... Oh, he was part-demon, okay — one of the ones tuned to sexuality, she thought, couldn't tell exactly which for sure. Part-demons were bloody _rare_, enough most people thought them impossible, Cassie could count the ones she'd met on the fingers of one hand. She couldn't help wondering how the hell his mother had...

Whatever, didn't really matter. Not to mention, standing in front of a room full of fourteen-year-olds was not the optimal time to imagine (a very naked) Mirabella Zabini conducting a (weirdly erotic) blood ritual of some kind with a sex demon...

_You're into some kinky shite, Professor Lovegood_.

Cassie bit her lip to keep herself from laughing. _And you're very rude, Mister Zabini_.

_Hey, you started it. With these intrusive analysis charms you're doing, it'd be harder for me to __**not**_ _end up slipping into your head a bit._

Not charms, technically, divining magics were in a different class, but he did have a point. _And I'm sure you gave it your best effort._

_Yes, ma'am_, he lied.

Cassie tried to give a disdainful sniff, but she wasn't quite managing to hold in a smile. _Get over there, then_.

Zabini blinked, glanced over his shoulder toward one half of the room — the polarised half, which was the _wrong_ half. Cassie might have imagined his focus being on Potter and Black. _Are you sure?_

_Yes._

_But I'm literally part-demon._

_Yes, you are, but that's a mostly physical trait. Your magic isn't given much toward one side or the other._

He paused, fixing her with a narrow-eyed look. _You're sure?_

_Yes, Zabini, I'm sure. Move it already._

With an odd expression on his face Cassie couldn't quite read, he obeyed. And that was all of them, finally. One last speech to each half of the class, somewhat quicker and smoother than with the third-years — some of the things she said here had migrated into her introductory lecture, would just be repeating herself — and they were dismissed, with a whole hour left in the period. There wasn't quite the surprise there had been before at being let out early, must have heard as much from the lower years. Breaking into high, excited chattering, the kids filled out of the room, leaving Cassie and Stacey alone.

Except not — one of the kids had lingered toward the rear of the pack, closing the door in front of her instead of leaving. "Did you need something, Miss Black?"

The baby black mage lightly skipped back up toward the two of them, looking for all the world like a carefree little girl — younger than her actual age, if Cassie didn't know she was fourteen she'd guess twelve, purebloods were tiny sometimes — her appearance clashing somewhat against the intense miasma of dark magic welling up from her, flowing out into her surroundings. It was worse than it'd been before, even, Cassie assumed Black had released her careful hold on her magic now that they were alone, her peers not around to be all fae-struck and googly-eyed, just leaking all over the place as untrained sorceresses were like to do.

In fact, the waves of dark magic crashing over her were starting to get annoying already. Cassie reached out, pinched the air in front of her, forming a miniature vortex in the flow of ambient magic through the room, the power emanating from Black bent away.

Black started, eyes widening a bit. "Hey! You can do that too?"

"Oh, sure," Cassie said, shrugging. "You need an awareness of magic most people don't have, but it's not difficult. Picked it up from a ritualist in Armenia."

"Huh. I didn't know it was a thing other people did, Dumbledore was trying to be all intimidating and it was giving me a headache, so I just, you know, improvised."

"Yeah, he does that." Of course, it didn't bother Cassie nearly as much as it would Black, since his aura was light enough they hadn't any conflict. (He _was_ powerful, more powerful than her, but she'd fought worse.) But, if Black really _was_ an Avatar, she wasn't surprised she'd figured it out on her own on the spot. But anyway, "Did you have a question or something?"

This wasn't about Cassie (arguably) saving her life at the riot, was it? Normally, it would have been the done thing for the Blacks to contact her to express their gratitude somehow, for rescuing their only heir at great personal risk — _theoretically_, anyway, Cassie hadn't truly feared for her own life at any point that night — but she hadn't expected anything. Another noble family would have, but the Blacks were _the Blacks_. And, well, Sirius was Sirius, he was hardly one for the formalities of society, and it likely wouldn't have occurred to him to do anything about it because he fully expected her to help people if she could, _especially_ children (she had a reputation), and they _had_ been fighting on the same side. One didn't need to reward allies, after all — they weren't _formal_ allies, but he probably thought as though they were. She hadn't expected him to do anything, and didn't really want him to either. There wasn't anything she could imagine she would want from the Blacks anyway.

"More an invitation, I guess." Black glanced over at Stacey quick. "How much do you trust her?"

"Enough to put her in charge of classes full of eleven- and twelve-year-old kids I'm partially responsible for."

Black nodded. "You belong to Artemis, right?"

Huh, where would she have heard of that? She meant, her whatever with Artemis wasn't _common_ knowledge, exactly — she didn't really _hide_ it either, in countries where high magic was more widely acceptable, but still. Had Luna told her? Not likely...but she _was_ a black mage (and baby Avatar), maybe her patron had said something. Hmm. "My, my, _that's_ a hell of a question to ask. We are in _Britain_, at the moment, you know."

The kid smirked at her. "And? You said you trusted her," she said, nodding over at Stacey. "And I'm definitely not going to tell anyone. I serve the Chaotic Power in the Aspect of Eris." _That_ explained a lot, and the way the girl just flatly blurted it out, Cassie had to bite her lip to hold in a shocked laugh — looked like the Black insanity still bred true. In her peripheral vision, Cassie noticed Stacey straighten, surprise colouring the air around her. Had Cassie not mentioned that? Oops.

Black was lucky Cassie had already gotten rid of the listening charms Dumbledore (presumably) had placed in the classroom. She and Stacey were hardly going to kick up a fuss about the silly girl being a black mage, but she somehow doubted Dumbledore would take it nearly as easily.

"Right, yes, I belong to Artemis." Better way to put it than saying she was a white mage, at least — which, she didn't _think_ she was? She'd never _properly_ dedicated herself to Artemis, with the whole ritual thing and the making of vows and all that, but Artemis sure did have an outside influence in her life, so... Whatever. For a second, she considered clarifying that she wasn't certain Cassie's Artemis was the same as Black's Artemis — sort of, she hadn't come to Artemis through the whole Powers framework, the face Artemis wore as an Aspect of the Youthful Power was slightly different — but it didn't really seem important enough to go on a tangent about it. "What does that have to do with anything?"

A smirk pulling at her lips, Black said, "Sometimes when Hogwarts with its classes and people and shite starts getting too tedious — like, _I'm about to murder someone and/or claw out my own eyes_ tedious — I go out into the forest to hunt giant man-eating spiders with the wilderfolk. Wanna come?"

"_Fuck_ yes." The words had burst out of Cassie's lips with no conscious decision to say them — not that she would have said anything else, almost shivering with excitement at the idea. She leaned back against her desk to keep herself from moving too much. But, as the words fully registered, her anticipatory relief quickly vanished, replaced with a creeping chill. "Wait, _giant man-eating spiders_? Are there _acromantulae_ in the forest?"

Black blinked. "Er...yeah? Weren't there in your time?"

"No! Well, not _really_ — Hagrid had a few he was keeping, but there weren't... How many?"

"A few hundred, I guess. No one's ever really counted them. Fewer than there were last year, probably, but they breed quickly." And Black lifted one shoulder in a light shrug, as though what she was saying weren't _completely horrifying_.

"But, but this is a school! For _children_! Acromantulae _eat people!"_ Sure, there were all kinds of things in the Forest that were less than perfectly safe to be around, but none of them _actively hunted_ humans! Hell, as dangerous and alien as centaurs and wilderfolk could be, they go out of their way to _protect_ children who blindly stumble into danger in their lands! What the _fuck_ was Dumbledore _thinking_, allowing _fucking acromantulae_ exist so close to a _school?!_ The students were told not to go out into the Forest, but they were _children_, _of course_ they would disobey, it was a _bloody fucking miracle nobody had died!_

"The wilderfolk and the centaurs have mostly managed to contain them so far. They weren't doing particularly well, they were going to lose eventually — acromantulae multiply much more quickly, they were inevitably going to be overwhelmed by weight of numbers."

After which they would wash over the school unopposed. Gods and Powers, this was _terrible_.

Or...not really, when she thought about it. Before, yes, acromantulae in the Forest would have ended very, _very_ badly. But now Cassie was here, and she would have needed _something_ to do in her off time. She was _not_ accustomed to keeping a regular schedule, had never held a steady job with _actual responsibilities_ in her entire life — and simply wasn't suited to it, likely due to Artemis's influence (not big on commitment, Artemis) — it was only a matter of time before she started feeling anxious and overwhelmed, and needed to do something mad and wild before she lost her mind entirely. Going out to hunt acromantulae on the weekends seemed like the _perfect_ option to let off some steam.

And it would even be accomplishing something important! The acromantulae could _not_ be tolerated to live in the Forest, _especially_ with all the children here at Hogwarts, that simply was not acceptable. And all the wilderfolk and centaurs, fuck, how much had they been suffering under the burden of dealing with the things these last decades?

If Big Silver had been killed, Cassie could not be held responsible for her actions.

"Right." She took in a long, slow breath through her nose, fighting to hold in the urge to run off to the Forest and start her extermination campaign _right now_. "Okay. I'm going to be busy with scheduling and staff meetings this weekend, so...next Saturday?"

Breaking into a bright, cheerful grin delightfully at odds with the topic of conversation, Black chirped, "Sure! I'll get a message out to Sylvie to expect a guest, so they don't freak out."

"Sylvie's wilderfolk?"

"Yep. You wouldn't know her, she's only a couple years older than me I think, wouldn't have been around in your time."

That wasn't why Cassie had asked — there'd just been an echo when Black had spoken of her, a very familiar kind of echo. She really hoped that got out somehow, because she could just imagine the _absolute shit-show_ people would make of the only heir to a Noble and Most Ancient House shagging a wilderfolk girl. It would be _hilarious_. "Tell the elders their favourite moonchild is coming back. They'll know who you're talking about."

Black's grin split wider. "You know, Cassie, I have the feeling this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

She laughed. "Get the hell out of my classroom, kid."

The mad little girl obeyed, firing off a sarcastic salute before skipping away. She only made it halfway across the room before she froze, glanced over her shoulder at them, then vanished into shadows with a smirk — because of course Lyra Black could shadow-walk, Cassie wasn't even surprised.

Stacey, though, was staring at the spot Black had vanished from, the sliver of her face Cassie could see from this angle peculiarly blank. Not too strange, she guessed, vampires did sort of think of shadow magic as their thing. Which was silly, Egyptian mages had been practising shadow magic for _millennia_ — it was actually somewhat common there, though shadow-walking specifically was still unusual — but so far as she knew Stacey had never been to the eastern Mediterannean, so. It was very possible she'd never seen a human shadow-walk before.

Not that Lyra Black was even entirely human anymore, but Stacey didn't know that.

"Well," Cassie said, the word coming out more sigh than proper speech. She slouched back across her desk, her head limply falling back. "I guess this year won't be _quite_ as tedious as I'd feared it might be, even if I can't be happy about _why_ — acromantulae in the Forest, _honestly_, what the fuck is Dumbledore _thinking_?"

It took a moment for Stacey to respond, her voice still slow and distracted when she did. "I'm certain there are few mages in all of Europe who haven't yet asked themselves that very question."

Cassie snorted. She wasn't wrong about that — Dumbledore had a very..._complicated_ reputation in the rest of the world.

"Are you certain this is a good idea?"

Frowning, she yanked her head back level, glanced in Stacey's direction. She was giving her an odd, uncertain kind of look. It only took Cassie a few seconds to figure out what she was talking about. "Honestly, Stacey, I'm not going to shag the girl."

"That's not what I meant."

"It's totally what you meant."

Stacey rolled her eyes. "It doesn't matter. Whether you do or not, what do you expect people to think when you're going out on weekends to cavort naked in the woods with one of your students?"

"_That's_ quite an assumption you're making."

An almost reluctant smile twitching at her lips, Stacey drawled, "Do you expect me to believe you planned to hunt acromantulae with wildfolk fully dressed?"

"Well, no." That would be _silly_ — it wasn't like wilderfolk cared about such proprieties, and acromantula blood was _very_ hard to wash out. She'd rather not get stuck with blue stains all over her clothes, thanks. "Not that I see what difference it makes. If I'm being perfectly honest, I've always found people's preoccupation with modesty and clothing and decorum incomprehensible. I only follow the rules because people will be annoying if I don't."

"You _have_ been talking with Lady Artemis since you were a small child, I'm not surprised."

Yes, good point. In Artemis's appearances in her dreams, she rarely bothered with human inanities like clothing, and even when she did she was hardly what British mages would consider presentable. Proper dress was just too civilised for Artemis, when it came down to it. Since she had been a major influence on Cassie throughout her entire life, it wasn't strange to think she might have absorbed Artemis's opinion on some things.

It _was_ a little weird, now that she thought about it, that Stacey would think that obvious, though. So far as Cassie was aware, Stacey had never met Artemis, and in the various depictions of the goddess Cassie had seen over the years she was...well, not _modestly_ dressed, but not exactly scandalous either. Had Cassie said something about that at some point? Hmm.

But anyway, "Shouldn't they be more concerned about the, you know, _acromantulae_ outside a _school?_ That seems far more important a sticking point than whether the people dealing with them are observing proper decorum or not."

Stacey sighed. "They'll _invent_ a scandal about you if they have to, Cassie. And you know, regardless of the truth, the hacks at the _Prophet_ will turn this into something salacious. Running off with Black like this, you're only giving them material."

"If they're going to make shite up anyway, what does it matter what I do?"

"Cassie, _amuri_, you—"

"You don't like Black, do you."

At least Stacey had the integrity to not lie about it — her face instantly collapsed into a distant frown, uncertain and unsettled. "There's something not right about that girl."

Her voice turned shaky with half-repressed giggling, Cassie said, "Well, _obviously_. You're aware she's a blood alchemy clone of the Blackheart, right? I've met the woman all of twice, and..."

"When did you meet the Blackheart?" Stacey asked, eyes suddenly wide.

"Oh, nothing big. My mother dragged me to the Festa Morgana once, in Seventy-Five." At the time, Mother hadn't yet given up on convincing her to be a good little noble girl, accept an advantageous marriage and make good little pureblood babies and do the society wife thing. As though Cassie had ever shown any inclination to do any of that ever. She'd _never_ given up, which was fucking absurd, it was like she didn't know Cassie at all.

Honestly, if Mother had wanted good little noble kids, she shouldn't have married a Lovegood.

"She went most years, seemingly just to start shite for fun. We only bumped into each other, I stayed away from her, I was too sensitive to dark magic to tolerate being too close to her back then. And in Eighty, I..." Cassie hesitated, staring back into the past. This was still one of the most absolute _strangest_ experiences in her life, wasn't certain how to feel about it even now. "Ah, I was back in the country, visiting the family on Imbolc, you know. Black — Lestrange, whatever — she found me somehow, wanted me to help her get to Lily. Not to hurt her," she said to the dumbfounded look on Stacey's face, "she's not an idiot. No, she wanted Lily to fix what she'd done to her precious Dark Lord."

"...What?"

Cassie shrugged. "I don't know, Black didn't explain. Reading between the lines, Lily had cursed him with high magic _somehow_, and Black couldn't reverse it without her."

Her eyes going even wider, Stacey looked _very_ much impressed, which was only appropriate, Lily had been a _very_ impressive woman. Honestly, Cassie didn't know _what_ she'd done, but it must have been something _really bad_ for Black to consider asking for help from a 'mudblood', and she'd been, what, seventeen or eighteen at the time? Even _Cassie_ wouldn't have had the nerve to get close enough to curse him at that age, and she was well aware she was _completely insane_. "What happened?"

"I refused, obviously. I'd have to be an idiot to trust the bloody _Blackheart_, I wouldn't have set Lily up like that, even if she would have listened to me." They'd had a _terrible_ falling out at the end of Cassie's seventh year — Lily had taken Cassie's plans to get the fuck out of Britain _very_ personally, had said some vicious things about her character, leaving the rest of them behind to die. (Lily had _sort of_ had a point, but for fuck's sake, Cassie had been _eighteen_, dealing with a Dark Lord and his idiot minions had _not_ been her responsibility.) After that, they'd only spoken once, when Cassie had turned up at her fucking disaster of a wedding. They'd...sort of made up, a little bit, but she certainly hadn't been in a position to ask her for favours. Especially when that favour was to agree to a meeting with Bellatrix Lestrange to help her worst enemy.

"And...she just let you go?"

"Oh, she threw a few curses at me in a snit, but her heart wasn't really in it. She popped away before all of them even landed. Damn liver-shredding curse got through, spent _hours_ dealing with that..."

"Uh-huh..." Stacey's expression wasn't clearly readable, but the echo of her mind was far less opaque — wonder, confusion, concern, affection. "And you still think it's a good idea to form any kind of relationship with Lyra Black."

Cassie grinned. "Now, sweetie, _that's_ a silly thing to say. When have I ever cared if something's a _good_ idea or not?"

Stacey let out a long sigh, the magic around her thickly coloured with exasperation. "All right, fine, be that way. If this whole British adventure blows up in your face and you find yourself in serious trouble, don't expect me to help you."

"That's complete shite, and you know it. You love me too much, you wouldn't be able to help yourself."

Stacey shot her a narrow-eyed glare. She hesitated for a moment, clearly attempting to come up with a response that wouldn't be giving up or else a lie — she couldn't get away with lying, Cassie always knew when someone was lying to her. After a few seconds of silence, Stacey grimaced, and disappeared into shadows without a word.

Once she was certain she was alone, Cassie burst into bright giggles. She'd be paying for that later, of course — in a most entertaining way, though Stacey would probably go further than she was entirely comfortable with as punishment — but she really just couldn't help herself sometimes.

_Tee hee, I win_.

* * *

_Woo, Cassie! Cassie is fun. And also doomed — she's going to hate being stuck at the castle with a steady job for nine months straight **so** much..._

_The "Italian" Stacey spoke there is actually Sicilian. Missina (spelled Messina in standard Italian), the city she's from, is in northeast Sicily, just across the straight from Calabria, the southernmost peninsula of mainland Italy. —Lysandra_

_It really amuses me that Cassie's characterisation of Lily (awesome, literally) and Sirius's characterisation of her are pretty much identical._

_Also, Cassie, of _course _the fact that Lyra's shagging wilderfolk is going to get out. Given that you're dealing with a girl dedicated to chaos it will _obviously _get out in the most dramatic way possible xD_

_And for the record, no, Cassie is not going to end up shagging Lyra at any point. Kid looks like she's about _twelve_, come on! Also, she's not likely to be to happy with Cassie when she realises that Cassie plans to kill _all _of the spiders, so, there's that. —Leigha_


	11. Welcome to Hogwarts — Kyrah Shirazi

She _did_ like Percival. Genuinely, not just as a feature of the artifice that was Nicolas and Perenelle Flamel. He was curious and quick-witted, and when they had first met she'd found his simplistic outlook on life, his trustingness, in spite of all the turmoil he'd then so recently been through, to be slightly adorable. Charming. He could have been a brilliant alchemist, if he'd been willing to accept the price such knowledge demanded of him — and in a certain way she admired the nobility, the _conviction_, behind his decision to abandon the field in order to maintain his moral code. You didn't see that very often, these days.

It was no real surprise that he understood their relationship — or, had understood it, for many decades — as a filial one. Nicolas had been a very paternal figure in his life, and he reminded Perenelle (Aalis) of Josse (her first son, long gone, now) and another, much earlier life.

He had come to them a bitter, hotheaded boy, mourning his sister and running from his past, had thrown himself into his studies with passion and vigor. Over the four years he'd lived with Nicolas and Perenelle, she had watched him come to terms with the dissolution of his relationship with Gellert Grindelwald — then little more than a budding firebrand politician, and the love of Percival's young life — and the guilt he held over the circumstances of Ariana's death. She had taken him into her heart, done her best to give him support, to help him find a direction for his considerable talents, and when his path took him away from her, toward a Mastery in Transfiguration and a teaching position at his _alma mater_ (in emulation of Nicolas, she suspected), she had been proud of the young man she could see him becoming.

They had kept in touch, in the years that followed. Nicolas had counseled him to act, when Gellert's movement began to take on a militant tone, when the tensions broke out into open conflict, the entire _world_ at war, it seemed. (_Again_ — the fragile peace which had been established after the Great War had lasted only two decades, hardly more than a _blink_, to one who had seen seven centuries by then.) He blamed himself — as though the fiercely determined young Gellert would not have attempted a revolution without his influence. And when he had finally found the courage to face his one-time lover, when he had struck him down — dishonourably, as Gellert withheld the killing blow, offering Percival his life for the sake of the history they shared — captured him and saw him caged away in his own prison, she helped him come to terms with that as well.

She _thought_ she'd managed to teach him that life was hardly black and white, that there were as many shades of grey as there were people in the world and as many potentially conflicting motivations; that sometimes there were no _good_ outcomes, no easy solutions or compromises to be had, and he could not _force_ people to agree with him. But the direction his political career had developed over the past several decades and his response to the rise of Lord Voldemort — once again taking an outsized proportion of responsibility for the actions of others entirely outside of his control — suggested not.

And while she had seen that he had failed to take to heart the lessons Perenelle and Nicolas had sought to teach him, she had understood. It was _difficult_, learning to see the world in a new way, learning to accept the limitations of one's own power. Much as she would _like_ to simply _tell_ him how to make peace with the decisions he had made, how to let go of responsibilities which were never truly his to begin with, she was terribly aware that (all too often) some lessons could only be learned by living them.

Time was, after all, the greatest teacher.

And now it seemed it was teaching _her_ a lesson, or rather reminding her of one she had somehow forgotten, in the years since she'd had much of a family to speak of. Sometimes, despite all your efforts, all your love and support and counsel, your children grow up to make poor choices.

It was one thing to have difficulty coming to see the world for all its beautiful, intricate complexity, and the people in it as individuals with agency of their own. Percival's perspective was, after all (and through no fault of his own), that of a great man — lauded in his youth for his power and intelligence, raised to a position of influence on an international stage too quickly to develop the skills and nuanced world-view necessary to exercise his newly-found political power with any sort of subtlety. It had been only too easy for him to become isolated, to feel the weight of thousands on his shoulders — far more people than he could know personally and individually — and come to think of those outside the political sphere as little more than pawns to be moved at the direction of their leaders, easily manipulated by anyone who knew the right words to say, the right actions to take.

It was not surprising that, when faced with the prospect of becoming a leader with no real experience or training and a Wizengamot which considered him little more than a figurehead at best (and an up-jumped muggle-loving fool at worst), he had come to believe that politics was a matter of _them_ versus _me_, reinforcing that black-and-white worldview his mother and her religion had instilled in him as a child.

Nor was it surprising that the weight of the Flamels' counsel, trust them though he might, did little to balance the effects of his daily struggles against his political opponents.

She had lived a very, _very_ long life. She had seen such things happen before.

It was something quite else to allow a school such as Hogwarts to fall into its current state of neglect and disrepair. Not _physically_, of course, and he almost certainly could not be held _entirely_ responsible — the last time she had visited the school was nearly two-hundred years ago, and there had been _many_ headmasters in that time, all of whom had likely contributed to the loosening of standards and lowering of expectations she could see all around her.

But to remember this school as one of the premier institutions of learning in Europe, only to be faced with the reality of what it had become, to realise that so many of the greatest, most outstanding flaws _could_ be easily corrected by a sufficiently involved Headmaster... It was a blow to her heart.

The House system, once little more than a way to organise students by their styles of learning, had somehow transformed itself into a disastrously divisive institution, and the list of course offerings had grown _pathetically_ short — there was hardly _any_ witchcraft left in the catalogue, no mind magic or weatherworking or geomancy, there hadn't been an _alchemy_ class since 1930! They didn't even teach _dueling_ anymore! And what about mathematics? Philosophy? Natural sciences? What about French? Welsh? _English_? There were no longer any non-magical courses to speak of! (_Including_ History, which still _ought_ to exist, but given the instructor might as well not be offered.) And the _staff_...

The staff were, as a whole, absolutely _appalling_. Half of Percival's hires over the past forty years were incompetent, and nearly as many should never have been allowed anywhere near vulnerable, impressionable _children_. (A concept that, honestly, she _still_ wasn't entirely accustomed to, despite recognising that today's students _were_ less capable than those in centuries past, more fragile and needing of careful handling — that, at least, wasn't Percival's fault, but that of their families and cultural shifts at a much broader level.) Several of the current professors shouldn't be teaching anyone below mastery level, one was _dead_—

If _she'd_ been responsible for hiring, the only full-time professors she would have retained from previous years would be Filius, Pomona, Aurora, Charity, and _possibly_ Septima — she, like Ashe and Severus, was _far_ better suited to working with more advanced students.

And Hagrid... She _strongly _suspected that the half-giant had been granted his position out of some misguided attempt to make up for the shambles Riddle had made of his life when they'd attended the school...completely disregarding that he had been raising an acromantula _in the building_, and apparently hadn't learned at any point since how comparatively fragile humans were. Pomona had told her that, according to the grapevine, he'd allowed a student to be attacked by a hippogriff in his very first lesson. Hagrid himself, when she asked him about it, hoping that the gossip was simply that, had hardly denied it. Quite to the contrary, he'd brushed the incident off! _"It weren't nothing, Lyra was fine. Ms Malfoy sent me an owl about it and her son was a little prat in the next few lessons, but the girl herself weren't fussed. Healed up the cut herself, never-you-mind. Bit annoyed, really, that we had to go back to less exciting creatures, but..." _(Because of course the student in question had been Black — she seemed to be at the centre of half the drama which had taken place over the past year or more.)

The History post was, as far as she was concerned, _vacant_ — everyone _knew_ there was only so much a ghost could change after its initial impression was made. A History professor who could not take into account current events or even developments on the world stage in the past fifty years was _hardly_ a qualified professor. If the Black girl hadn't driven Kyrah Shirazi's predecessor into St. Mungo's, based on the stories she'd gathered from ghosts and portraits, she thought that she might have been tempted to do so herself. (There were few things she hated more than pretenders to the Craft, and Miss Trelawney sounded like a particularly _egregious_ example.) And the constant replacement of Defence professors was simply _mind-boggling_. Young Castalia seemed to be the best they'd had in some _decades_ — and she, while enthusiastic and obviously qualified, had almost certainly bitten off more than she could chew, with her ideas to revolutionise the course. (She gathered that the girl planned to institute several ideas she'd had to improve the class when she'd been a student herself, with no real understanding of the logistical difficulties she would face.)

Minerva, she would have kept, though not as a professor. That girl was a born administrator, so far as she was concerned. There was no reason to force the Deputy Headmistress to spend the vast majority of her time and energy on teaching a core class, _as well_ as managing the most openly unruly quarter of the students. At least Severus, for all his shortcomings as a teacher, actually seemed to _understand _the students who were his responsibility — from even the little she had seen in the week since the students returned, Minerva _didn't_, relying on strict discipline to keep her kittens in line, only encouraging their rebelliousness.

In fact, none of the heads of house ought to teach a core class. Pomona was a gem, and Filius one of the most dynamic lecturers she'd ever met, but they too were severely overworked, attempting to give their students the time they required from their heads of house as well as keep up their professorial duties and compensate for Minerva's shortcomings, all of which came back to Percival neglecting the administration of the school as he attempted to juggle both international and local political careers as well. She suspected that Severus was only able to both keep up with his workload _and_ find the time to advocate properly for his students through liberal self-medication.

She _also_ suspected that Percival had been heaping extraneous responsibilities onto the former Death Eater as some form of punishment for the mistakes of his youth. Granted, those mistakes had had _terrible_ consequences, but his crimes were hardly worse than any of the Death Eaters currently holding seats in the Wizengamot or critical positions in the Ministry. Making a scapegoat for his frustration over the outcome of the conflict with Riddle and Bellatrix out of his exceedingly competent young potions master was, in her view, an incredibly _petty_ action, one which, had she not seen it herself, she would not have thought her Percival would be capable of. But she _had_ seen it herself.

And she wasn't the only one — she'd spent the better part of last evening sharing a bottle of brandy with Poppy, Pomona, and Rolanda, the other women confirming the hints she had seen of the tensions between the Headmaster and the sardonic young professor. They had all known him as a student, remembered him as a brilliant but troubled boy. He had spent the better part of his school years in an interminable feud with a group of Gryffindor bullies for his refusal to bow to their juvenile delusions of superiority, _and _his own housemates for his resistance to the young Death Eaters' overtures.

In Poppy's words, the situation between Percival and Severus was a sort of cold war version of that same feud. The Headmaster, the healer suspected, was attempting to pressure his Potions Master into some kind of breakdown which would prove his 'façade' of repentance false. Severus, of course, refused to admit that the additional duties foisted upon him were any sort of imposition at all, and so was continually saddled with more work as Percival upped the ante.

Her Percival, the boy she remembered as having a somewhat simplistic but fundamentally forgiving outlook on life, who had always tried to give even his enemies second chances, had somehow come to be a man who refused to believe that an enemy — and one, Poppy insisted fiercely, whose enlistment had been the best of a poor lot of choices available to him — could repent his mistakes and become a boon to society.

Between that realisation and the outright _paranoia_ he had demonstrated surrounding the Black girl and her (likely figmental) conspiracy to destroy him, not to mention the state he'd allowed to persist at Hogwarts — even _encouraged_, spreading himself so thin she didn't think he had even _noticed_ the travesty which had become of this once-excellent institution — she found herself asking what had _happened_ to her poor boy. These were not the sort of problems which developed overnight, but with their interactions restricted to letters and brief visits she hadn't seen them growing. And now, in the midst of a world where he held complete authority, they were _impossible_ not to see.

She was, to put it plainly, _concerned_.

It didn't help either, that she'd begun to feel immensely guilty about allowing Percy to think she had died — and that he'd played some role in it, failing to protect the (entirely fictional) Philosopher's Stone from Riddle. He did, she thought, bear some responsibility for deciding to meddle in her efforts to 'secure' the thing, but even so, it had been undoubtedly cruel of her to allow him to suffer so.

Cruel _and_ selfish, as she'd prioritised her own wellbeing, gaining her freedom from the Flamels and their legacy, over his. She'd tried to explain that it had been time to end the Flamels' story, time for them to publicly but quietly slip into the night. Assuring him that she yet lived would have ruined her plan, even if it would have assuaged his guilt, and in the end...she'd just carried on with it.

She hadn't wanted to explain that there never had been a Stone and, moreover, hadn't wanted to face those like Percy with whom she'd still had a relationship, no matter how distant. She had learned many years ago that it was always harder to leave if she let people try to talk her out of it. She _had_, in fact, been talked out of it before — it was too easy to form new relationships thinking, _When these ones die, I'll move on_, only to fall into more friendships in the meanwhile. That was, after all, why she'd come up with the Flamels in the first place — she could continue to have a relationship with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren when, if she were pretending to be human, aging 'naturally', she would have to leave them after only a century or so.

But it had to end _sometime_, and there was never going to be a convenient point where _everyone _she cared about was dead.

No, she had decided, it was kinder if _she_ were to 'die' — she hadn't wanted her friends to think that she was abandoning them, to take it to heart that she was so _very_ tired of being the Flamels that even their company and correspondence couldn't entice her to stay. She'd feared not only that they would try to talk her into staying, but that they would, as she could tell Percy was now, feel that they were somehow inadequate, that she would rather walk away and never see them again (so far as they would know) than remain a part of their lives.

She'd tried to explain that it was simply unnatural for a metamorph to live a single life for hundreds of years, especially when it wasn't widely known that she _was_ a metamorph. The only other she knew who had kept up a single persona for more than a century or two was Nymphadora, and she only _revisited_ that identity every few decades — she hardly tried to live that life _consistently_. (And even so, most of the other metamorphs she knew considered Nymphadora to be nearly as odd as the Flamels for her peculiar attachment to her first name.)

It was _better_, she'd thought, to announce that the Flamels would soon run out of the mystical, imaginary elixir which sustained them, give everyone time to say their farewells, come to terms with her taking her very final leave. Let them have some closure, so to speak.

But then Nymphadora's many-times-great-granddaughter had invited her to judge the Triwizard Tournament — a once in a lifetime opportunity, even for her — and she hadn't been able to bring herself to say _no_. She _had_ managed to convince those in the know to conceal her identity, rather than out her as Perenelle (or Nicolas), to allow her to appear on the judges' panel with a different identity, one she hadn't fully developed yet. (She was leaning toward the infamous Salazar Slytherin, just for the shock value. It wasn't as though the metamorph who'd made that identity famous had used it in the past few centuries — she would _ask_, of course, it would be rude not to, but she doubted they'd care.)

But for Percy it was too late. The trust he'd had in her was damaged now, deeply so, and she doubted it could ever be fully repaired — which only made it more difficult for her to urge him to re-examine his recent decisions and conclusions in a more objective light.

And, on top of all that, there was a _poltergeist_ in her classroom.

A poltergeist making flatulent noises any time she opened her mouth in an attempt to carry on her introductory lesson in spite of its presence.

The fourteen-year-olds — Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors, this section — were laughing at her. Some of them were, of course, trying to hide it, but some of them weren't bothering. "So, I would like to—"

"_PPPPRRRTT!_"

For the eighth time, in five minutes.

There were _ways_ to get rid of poltergeists — temporarily, at least. Were Kyrah just passing through, she wouldn't hesitate to use one of the less..._dramatic_, even with all the children looking on. But with hundreds of students crammed into a relatively small, highly magical area like Hogwarts, it would be only a matter of days or weeks before the spirit of mischief returned, and as Kyrah _wasn't_ simply passing through she would almost certainly become the primary target of its attentions. She _could_, of course, _keep_ banishing it, but the Castle itself would eventually get annoyed with her constant attacks on what was, when it came down to it, a part of its magics, as surely as the wards or the souls bound into its heart or the bloody _house elves_.

Kyrah Shirazi did _not_ want to go picking a fight with an entire bloody _castle_. _Especially_ not one she intended to live in for the better part of the coming year.

"Peeves, I really _must_—" ("PRRT!") "—insist that—" ("_PRRRT!_") Well _fine_. She'd tried being calm and reasonable. Time to see if intimidation might work. (It probably wouldn't, but it would, at least, be an outlet for her frustration.) She let the façade she'd been maintaining — that of a thirty-nine-year-old witch from muggle Persia (Iran, now) — fade away. Not _physically_, but her bearing and attitude and all the little bits that made a _persona_ seem like a _person_. She wasn't _truly_ Kyrah Shirazi, after all. She was a powerful, preternatural being, favoured by Magic Itself — dangerous and not to be fucked with, even by a spirit of mischief such as this. Magic flared around her, crackling invisibly, save to those who were already rather sensitive to it, but...

"Ahh!" the poltergeist exclaimed. "Scary fairy coming out to play, Peevsie sees!"

Yes, she'd thought it might notice that. "I'm not playing, poltergeist. You _will_ leave this room. And you will do so _now_."

It flipped over in mid-air, from hovering as though lying on its stomach on a bed, to showing her its arse, peeking at her upside down from between its ankles. "Shan't do nothing if you don't say _please_," it taunted her.

Well, she truly doubted it would do any good, she supposed it wouldn't hurt to _try_... "Please. Go. Away."

It flipped over again to 'lie' on its back, cackling madly, accompanied by many of the students. The metamorph glared at it. "Scary Fairy knows better than to expect Peeves to play her game! But he _did_ promise, and so, does _nothing_!"

"I _will_—"

"PRRT!"

"You know, Peeves, it's just not as funny when you've already heard the joke," one of the students said, sounding genuinely bored with his antics. Her focus entirely on the thing as it was, Kyrah failed to see which one had spoken. The poltergeist answered that question for her, though, almost at once.

"Has the Little Lady heard the one about a dog, a rat, and a stag walking into a bar?" it asked, spinning around to hover inches from Lyra Black's nose, smirking broadly. A reference, no doubt, to that horrid miscarriage of justice involving the Lord of her family — Pettigrew's trial over the summer had revealed that he and his friends had been animagi with those particular forms.

Though it _was_ odd that it was that particular student who had spoken. She'd hardly seen much of Miss Black in the week since the students returned to the castle. She'd ceded the time slot of what ought to have been this group's first lesson to Cassie — she doubted the girl knew how extensive a project remaking the Defence curriculum would be, but that didn't mean she didn't want her to succeed — and while they had seen each other several times in passing, they hadn't actually spoken to each other. Based on the stories she'd gathered from the staff, however, she would _hardly_ have expected the young troublemaker to intervene with the poltergeist on her behalf.

"I imagine only the dog and the stag _walk into _it, and the rat gets clean away...for a while, at least." The girl grinned at her own pointed addition to what would likely have been a cruel jab at Sirius Black's intelligence and the tragedy that was the House of Black in recent decades, sending the poltergeist somersaulting backward through the air, cackling again and clapping in delight. "You know what would be _really_ funny?"

"Peevsie is listening, my Lady..."

"The Sorting Hat, I imagine, gets _awfully_ lonely, just sitting up in Dumbledore's office all alone."

"It does, it does. Poor Hattie Hat," the poltergeist agreed, grinning and entirely failing to sound the least bit sympathetic to the Hat's plight.

"Yes, well, I imagine that if _someone_ were to..._liberate_ the Hat, perhaps take it on a tour of Heads, well... Sprout's reaction might not be that entertaining, but I expect Minnie's would more than make up for it."

The poltergeist put on an expression of pure ecstasy, only exaggerated by its cartoonish features. "Little Lady has the _best_ ideas!" It started floating toward one of the upper corners of the room immediately.

"Steal a camera first! I want pictures!" Black shouted after it, even as its belled toes disappeared through the ceiling and the girl sitting beside her hissed, "I didn't want you to send him after Professor McGonagall!"

Black just shrugged. "Next time be more specific."

Ah, that explained it, she supposed. Based on the gossip she'd gathered, she gave little credence to Percy's theory that there was someone directing little Lyra Black's apparent campaign against him, but based on the tenor of her magic... Well, it was hardly a secret that the Black black mages could be a bit _lost_, with all the power in the world and no idea what to do with it. There was, after all, a reason that Nymphadora kept returning to Carthage, and everyone's least-favourite Avatar made a habit of attaching herself to some poor mortal or another, taking their desires and whims as inspiration in her efforts to entertain herself. This girl must be Black's current muse.

She wondered, even as she relaxed back into the posture and demeanour of the _foreign witch_ half of her peri-pretending-to-be-nothing-more-than-a-foreign-witch character, whether the serious, slightly-disapproving girl beside Black realised what it meant that little Lyra was so willing to do as she bid — and, if she did, would she be the next Henry Black, or the next Tom Riddle?

"Thank you, Miss...?"

Black raised an eyebrow, the tiniest of smirks on her face, as though she also already knew _exactly_ who she was talking to. Not entirely surprising, the _foreign witch_ façade was deliberately thin — she had likely done it serious damage, losing her temper with the poltergeist a moment ago — and Black had to know that there were no Greater Fae in this dimension any longer. Not to mention she _had_ invited Perenelle to help judge the Tournament in the first place and, given the form of address in that invitation, she likely knew enough about the history of metamorphs to get the joke which was Kyrah Shirazi.

"Black. Now that Peeves is gone, I have a question about pensieves," she began, only confirming that supposition. Perenelle Flamel had been one of the first enchanters to begin exploring the potential of memory-oriented scrying.

That said, she wasn't about to admit it — Kyrah hadn't any special expertise in the subject, and she hadn't even managed to properly _introduce_ herself, yet! She cut the girl off rather quickly. "I'm afraid it will have to wait, Miss Black." The girl pouted at her, though she couldn't _possibly_ have expected any other answer. "We _will_ be discussing scrying aids later in the term, including the pensieve, but before we get into a lot of long, potentially boring lectures — including a discussion of the syllabus — I would like to go around the room and let us all perhaps get to know each other a bit better. After all, while you have all been students together for the past several years, it occurs to me that your houses keep you somewhat separate outside of classes, and I, of course, know none of you.

"I propose that we play a game — two truths and a lie. It's quite simple. Each person, in turn, introduces themselves and tells the rest of us two true things about themselves, and one lie; then we try to figure out which statements are true, and which false. I'll go first. My name is Kyrah Shirazi — you may call me Professor Shirazi. I was born in the muggle city of Tehran, my father was a cobbler before he passed beyond the Veil, and I wear a size thirty-seven shoe."

A babble of noise erupted as the students began debating amongst themselves which of the three very reasonable-sounding _facts_ about herself was false. After several minutes, they reached a consensus. "You don't wear a thirty-seven shoe," a girl said firmly. "That would be _tiny_."

"And what is your name, Miss...?"

"Parvati Patil, Professor."

"Well, I'm sorry to inform you, Miss Patil, but I do wear a thirty-seven." As well as any other size shoe she chose, but that was hardly the point.

"She's not from Tehran," Miss Black informed the other girl.

"Well where is she from, then, know-it-all?"

Black shrugged before giving the obvious (albeit incorrect) answer. "Shiraz?"

"A good guess, but no, Miss Black. I am from a city called Fasa, somewhat south of Shiraz." That was, in fact, where she'd encountered the peri whose face she was now wearing, almost five centuries ago. "Would you care to go next?"

"Oh. Sure, I guess I could." She paused for a moment to think before saying, "My name's Lyra Black. I'm definitely not Bellatrix's daughter, I was raised by werewolf terrorists, and I know a spell to set dementors on fire."

Clearly Percy's teenage nemesis had decided to take the opposite approach from Kyrah herself, offering them three statements which all sounded _false_. Or, well, she assumed _not Bellatrix's daughter_ seemed as unlikely to everyone else as it did to her — accounting for the age difference, they were bloody identical. (Metamorphs tended to have an eye for that sort of thing.) Granted, it might be stretching the definition of _daughter_ a bit, applying it to a child created through blood alchemy (likely with the use of a surrogate) who hadn't even been raised by the witch in question, but Kyrah would argue it was close enough. In any case, complete silence met this ridiculous offering.

"Er, Lyra? I'm pretty sure two of those were supposed to be _true_," a round-faced boy said hesitantly. "I mean, that's right, isn't it?"

Black's...friend gave the boy an exasperated sigh. "Yes, Neville. Two of them _were_ true. Lyra's just absurd."

"Hey, Maïa! Don't just _tell_ them! They're supposed to guess!"

Maïa? Was the girl from whom Black was taking direction the Hermione Granger whose article had caused so much trouble for poor Percival over the summer? There were no other students among the dozen listed on the course roster for whom _Maïa_ was a natural diminutive, so it did seem likely. Kyrah very nearly snorted trying to suppress a laugh at the realisation — perhaps there _was_ a conspiracy after all...if one could call a couple of rebellious fledgling witches a conspiracy.

The argument that followed centred on whether or not it was possible to set a dementor on fire, how plausible it was for her to actually have been raised by werewolves, and whether she'd actually admit it if the infamous Bellatrix Lestrange were her mother. Kyrah personally thought that, assuming the girl actually _had_ given them two truths, the lie was probably that she had been raised by werewolves (no matter how plausible Miss Patil and her friends seemed to believe that claim). Of course it wasn't possible to set a dementor alight with _real_ fire, but there were several classes of spells that created effects similar enough to fire that they were generally referred to as such, and it would be easy to claim that "mother" implied a _much_ greater degree of involvement in the girl's life than Bellatrix could possibly have had.

After several minutes, Black, apparently bored, confirmed that deduction, telling them that she would only have been raised by werewolves if Bellatrix _were_ her mother, and since she was actually a fae changeling, she couldn't possibly have been raised by werewolves. (Winking at Kyrah, cheeky brat.)

Granger rolled her eyes. "Oh, you are _not_."

"No, that would be _silly_. Clearly I actually _am_ Bella's daughter, raised in Fenrir Greyback's pack, because _everyone_ knows you can't set a dementor on fire. I mean, you _know_ I'm not actually a werewolf, so that seems kind of unlikely, but hey, maybe I'm immune to the Curse or something." She shrugged, shit-eating grin firmly in place.

Dark-haired, green-eyed Harry Potter leaned around Granger to say, "I thought you told me you _could_ set a dementor on fire!"

"I tell a lot of people a lot of things, Harry. I told a bunch of people I was obliviated at the end of last term, for example. Objectivity is an illusion, and _truth_ is an artefact of oversimplification."

"What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?" a girl who hadn't yet introduced herself demanded over Miss Patil's efforts to hush her. It might just have been Kyrah, but the look she was shooting at Black seemed rather _alarmed_. As did Granger, actually — Kyrah made a mental note to find out more about the incident they were referencing.

"Either that I'm immune to obliviation along with the werewolf curse, or that I've been reading too much Oscar Wilde and the empty glibness is contagious."

Well..._that_ was a thought, wasn't it. She wouldn't be surprised if the girl _was_ immune to the Curse. Hela, the only researcher who'd published any truly thorough etic perspectives on the werewolf condition, had claimed that certain categories of beings — vampires (and their imitators), metamorphs, wilderfolk, and shadow-kin had been her examples — should theoretically be immune (or partially immune) to the Curse, the magics fundamental to their existence rendering them too inhuman for the Curse to take hold effectively. That was one of the reasons Hela was supposed by many to be a vampire, though it wasn't out of the question that a dedicated Black might also be too steeped in magic to register as 'human'. One would have to be mad to test the idea, but then that _was_ a defining feature of the House of Black, especially these past few centuries.

"Anyway, was that you volunteering to go next, Bunny?"

"Fine! My name's Lavender Brown. I'm a Virgo, the Slytherins call me _Bunny_ because my poor Binky got murdered by a fox last fall and they're all cruel, heartless ar– _jerks!_ And Draco Malfoy is _not_ my boyfriend!"

"Actually, _Lav_, we call you Bunny because yours was killed and we're far too mature and sophisticated for toilet humour. The only other thing that came to mind was _Loo_, you see. So."

"Shut _up_, Black!"

"I think that counts as a truth, though?" the round-faced boy said. "I mean, Lavender _thought_ it was a truth, so it's not the lie..."

"Her birthday's in the first week of March — she's a Pisces, not a Virgo. My turn!" Granger said, leaving no room for debate. "My name's Hermione Granger. The first proper spell I ever did was transfiguring a leaf into a flower; my birthday is in September, but I'm the youngest person in our class, not the oldest; and...oh, I don't know...Draco Malfoy's not _my_ boyfriend either."

As the game proceeded, Kyrah matching faces to the student roster she'd been provided, she learned that Draco Malfoy was not dating four other students (Brown's friend Patil, Leanne Malone, Megan Jones, and Neville Longbottom, who'd managed to say it with an impressively straight face, at least in contrast to Brown's, which was by that point glowing a mortified red); about half the class had some occlumency training, not obviously telegraphing the veracity of their statements; and a bare handful had enough experience with proper _witchcraft_ to attempt to actually _divine_ the answers, whether consciously or not — Black, Bones, Longbottom, Potter, and, surprisingly, Granger.

The children of the Most Ancient Houses would obviously have been taught elementary magical awareness and control by their families (though Black's could use some work), and Potter was clearly a legilimens, for all he was trying _very_ hard to pretend he wasn't. Granger, however, was _muggleborn_, and if Percy's professors weren't teaching basic magic-sensing exercises — which, given the lack of awareness from the majority of the students, they weren't — it was _odd_ that she would have developed that particular skill. Perhaps Black had been teaching her?

In any case, it was clear that she would have her work cut out for her with this group. She couldn't _imagine_ what they'd been learning from their former 'professor' — whom Percival had given the job more out of charity and a desire to keep her from Riddle than any actual _expertise_ on her part, much as she suspected he had with Hagrid. Surely meditation and magical perception were among the _easiest_ skills to fake practising, regardless of one's intuitive ability (or lack thereof) to interpret such information as one might perceive. If _she_ knew nothing about divination, she thought that was the _first_ thing she'd 'teach'.

Though it was, in fact, the first thing she'd teach regardless. Followed by an in-depth comparison between divining and divining _charms_ — likely a simple _tempus_, to start, and possibly a few direction-seeking spells. If that went well, she would introduce the idea of scrying foci, which would likely require a diversion into other foci — wands and dueling knives were the most common in Britain — and the distinction between witchcraft and wizardry. That would, she thought, be a good transition into discussing the basics of ritual — potions and alchemy were the most widely-taught branches of witchcraft these days — and the commonalities between that discipline and scrying, in terms of semantic development. They probably wouldn't get much further than that before the end of the year — especially if they integrated exercises for scrying the _past_ as well as the present, which was what she would be teaching the third-years. Obviously these children had missed out on it. (And the fifth-years were almost certainly not going to make it to proper predictive scrying and the various methods of analysing said predictions in an attempt to determine their relevance to any particular timeline.)

"And perhaps, if we have time at the end of the year, we'll do a bit of mind magic."

Several students gasped or grinned, muttering to their neighbors. Yes, she'd thought they'd like that — boring as occlumency exercises tended to be, there was a certain mystique about the Mind Arts, if only because so few people were actually familiar with them anymore.

Granger's hand shot into the air. "Does that mean we'll be learning the Legilimency charm?"

"What about Obliviation?" Jones chimed in.

"I doubt anyone will get quite _that_ far this year. We'll begin with basic occlusion; isolating, duplicating and extracting one's own memories to be shared as with a pensieve; and so-called _passive legilimency_ — that is, scrying the thoughts and emotions that people project out into the greater world."

"You can _do_ that?" Potter exclaimed. "Er, sorry, professor. But, um. I mean, I thought you had to be a legilimens to..."

Kyrah gave him a soft smile. "Legilimens have a natural talent for entering and actively shaping another person's mind, which non-legilimens require a spell to emulate. They also have a talent for thought-scrying, or passive legilimency, which comes to them naturally, as it does to empaths and some other more generalised Seers. Others can learn to pick up the emanations of projected thoughts in much the same way one picks up the echoes of distant or yet-to-occur events in more mundane scrying. Much in the same way that everyone can learn to speak another language, but an omniglot can do so much more quickly and easily.

"To begin, however, we will be focusing on focusing."

Black groaned. "But focusing exercises are _boring_."

"Which I presume is why you've been neglecting yours, Miss Black." The girl pulled an outraged face at her, but Kyrah continued before she could object — she had to know that, no matter how good her mental defences might be, her hold on her magic was tenuous at best. "Not only will we be learning to contain our magic within ourselves, but we will explore the idea of drawing on different registers and poles of magic when casting spells, and of course the idea of extending our magic beyond our bodies, opening ourselves to the echoes of events occurring all around us. You may have heard this process referred to as _opening your inner eye_, and the echoes of events as _emanations of the universe_ or _the Great Symphony_."

Several faces around the room cleared at that, Brown and Patil among them. Kyrah sighed. She had suspected the fraud who'd been their instructor last year might have resorted to more metaphorical descriptions, lacking any real understanding of the process and the nature of magic. Divination was truly a much more theoretical field than most people thought — the fact that it wasn't taught as such was practically _criminal_.

"What about freeform magic?" Black asked, a certain wheedling in her tone. "That's basically an effect of aura manipulation too, right?"

"If you know enough to ask, I daresay you know enough to explore the subject independently, on your own time," Kyrah said firmly. They would already have quite enough on their plates attempting to master freeform divination techniques which had been adapted into simple charms without attempting to adapt simple charms into freeform physical effects.

"So much for an easy _O_," Malone muttered to her neighbor, Rivers.

He shot a quick look at Kyrah before kicking his friend under the table. "I think she heard you," he hissed.

"I did, yes," she confirmed. "I am, however, quite familiar with my predecessor's reputation and the resulting quality of your previous divination lessons. I am not in the least surprised that this subject has a reputation as an _easy O_. Now, two more things before we adjourn for the day.

"Firstly, on the topic of marking: no, this class will no longer be an _easy O_. I do not believe that ranked marking has any place in a discipline as ephemeral and talent-based as divination. There is no simple checklist of spells one can learn to claim a degree of mastery in the subject, and those who struggle with the necessary skills to advance should not be held to standards set by those with an inherent gift for it. Therefore, I will be tracking your efforts and progress individually on an advance-retain basis."

"Does that—" Granger demanded, her hand in the air again. Kyrah silenced her with a glare and a silent, wandless jinx. Black broke it for her immediately, of course, reaching across the space between them and touching her friend to transfer a freeform finishing effect rather than draw her wand, but the shock of having been _silenced_ by a _teacher_ was enough to keep Granger quiet, anyway.

"I realise we haven't discussed _rules_ as such, but one generally doesn't go wrong in observing basic politeness — including not interrupting when the instructor is speaking. No, there will be no marks assigned at any point. If you wish to know how you are progressing you may ask, privately, during my office hours, which you will recall are displayed on the slate behind me.

"Now, as I was saying, I happen to agree with Professors Lovegood and Babbling that dividing subjects into levels and sections strictly based on age and house is a ridiculous conceit. Those of you who require more time to practice certain skills will be welcome to remain in this class next year along with those advanced from the current third-year class, and those to whom the subject comes easily may request to be advanced early, at term. If and when you decide you would like to sit a competency or proficiency examination, we will discuss the skills that will be tested and whether you are ready to demonstrate them for the examiners, and spend some time addressing any specific deficiencies. As such, it would behoove you to bring the matter to me at least a month or two in advance of the exams."

Stunned, complete silence met this suggestion, a full quarter of the students allowing their jaws to droop in their shock. Honestly, it was as though no one had ever addressed them as _individuals_, with _individual abilities and potential_ before. (Standardised exams were, she was certain, the _worst_ thing to happen to education since individual apprenticeships were phased out at the elementary level.)

"Secondly, homework. Your first exercise will be to choose a partner and pick cards from a standard tarot deck — if you do not have one, there are several here you may borrow. You may look at your card if you like, but do not show your partner. Meditate on your partner and their card, which is to say, sit somewhere you will not be distracted by ongoing activities, and attempt to sense the suit of the card your partner is holding. You may find that this sense takes the form of a certain feeling, or an image appearing before closed eyes, or a sound you aren't truly _hearing_, or any number of other proximal interpretations — your mind, not being accustomed to interpreting strictly magical input, will find ways to translate what it senses into a more familiar format.

"When you feel certain that you know the suit of the card, write it down. If you are simply certain that you will never be able to tell, guess. Wait until both partners have recorded an answer, and check them. Record whether you were correct, shuffle the deck, and do it again. I expect each pair to do this at least fifty times. If you find you guess correctly about a quarter of the time, this method probably is not working for you — don't be discouraged, we can discuss other exercises to try in our next lesson. If you find you are guessing correctly almost all the time, or never guessing correctly, focus on exactly how you are choosing the suit to write down, and try to articulate it. All of you bring your recorded guesses and actual results to class on Monday, and be ready to discuss your perception of the exercise.

"Any questions?"

Not even Granger raised a hand, occupied, along with the vast majority of the students, exchanging significant glances, silently calling dibs on various partners.

"Very well, then. You are dismissed. Potter, Black, a word."

Chatter erupted as the students gathered their effects, surging toward the doorway as though sitting in a single lesson (and one which they'd spent the better part of playing games at that) for _thirty-five minutes_ was some sort of hideous torture. Granger lingered, muttering something to Black, who responded at a perfectly normal volume. "As your name is neither Potter nor Black, I'm guessing yes. I'll meet you in the library later."

Granger nodded, closing the door behind herself with a last suspicious glance toward Kyrah, leaving her friends alone with their new professor — lingering in the corridor, if Kyrah was any judge. "This won't take long, I simply wanted to notify you that I am requiring you two to work together on any partner-based divining exercises."

Black, apparently unsurprised, rolled her eyes. "Sure."

"Er, why? I mean, sorry, yes, professor. But why?"

"Why am I singling you out, or why have I chosen to do so in privacy?"

"Um...both?"

"You're a legilimens. I presume this is not common knowledge."

"Nope," Black said. "Harry, what do you _think_ would happen if you try to use magic to determine what card someone else is holding? You're almost definitely going to end up reading _them_ rather than the _moment_."

Potter winced slightly. "Right. Okay, that makes sense. Um, thanks for not telling everyone, I guess."

"Yeah, doesn't make up for silencing Maïa, though." Black sent a very pointed glare at Kyrah.

"And you don't silence everyone all the time?"

"That's _different_."

"I really don't think it is, actually."

"Yes, well, you are welcome to debate the point elsewhere," Kyrah noted, pulling the door open with a thought and waving them toward it.

"_Go fuck a hedgehog, shape-changer_," Black muttered, stalking away. Kyrah was so surprised to hear High Elvish from a _Hogwarts_ _student _that she completely failed to compose a come-back before the young witch was halfway to the door.

Potter was already asking, "What was _that_?" in a _very_ suspicious tone.

"Farsi," the girl said, apparently still willing to play along with Kyrah's existence, even if she was a bit annoyed with her at the moment. "Just being polite."

"Since when do you speak Farsi? Actually, strike that, since when are you _polite_?"

Okay, _that _was funny. Kyrah bit her lip, trying not to laugh. Even if they weren't paying much attention to her anymore, it wouldn't do to ruin her stern-but-fun school-teacher façade.

Black hesitated a moment, clearly attempting to come up with a response. "...Come on, Maïa will be waiting."

Kyrah _just_ managed to hold in her giggles until the door slammed behind them.

* * *

_I'm pretty much just using "she" as the default pronoun for metamorphs now, in much the same way "he" is sometimes used as a default pronoun, especially in older books. I did consider using "they" for bits where the metamorph who is currently Kyrah Shirazi is referring to the period when she played both Perenelle and Nicolas, but decided that was a bit confusing, and begged the question why not use "they" all the time (because Perenelle being closer to the person the metamorph was born is more a matter of personality than the fact that the character is female — after seven centuries of living as a man as well as a woman, I imagine the concept of gender loses almost all meaning), but by that point I'd already written "she" throughout most of the scene (in contrast to when she was playing multiple characters) and didn't feel like changing it. —Leigha_

_You might have noticed "they" was used in reference to a metamorph once, talking about Salazar Slytherin. (Yes, Slytherin is a metamorph in this fic, and our resident metamorph-pretending-to-be-a-fairy-pretending-to-be-human is going to play him judging the tournament, because she's a troll like that.) Kyrah is using it there because she doesn't know which gender the ex-Slytherin is being right now, or even if they have a preference at all. It's just polite._

_So, that's the last scene of what was originally planned as a single chapter. They're just under 35k added together. Just, holy hell, we have problems. Wordy bitches. —Lysandra_


	12. An Impossible Task

Sirius squirmed in his hard, wooden chair, trying not to be distracted by the pickled potions ingredients and bioalchemical curiosities floating in bottles on the shelves around him, or the cold stone and dim, bluish light of a starfire charm and the accompanying hint of dark magic on the air, or the way the fire burned silently off to his left, buried under charms to prevent its warmth ruining the pervasive chill in the room, casting ominous, flickering shadows across the walls.

Had Snivellus actually _tried_ to make this office as uncomfortable as possible? When Slughorn had been here, it had been carpeted, and, well..._cozy_. He was pretty sure that was the same heavy, mahogany desk the old head of the Potions department had used, but in Slughorn's time it had been covered with little souvenirs and thank-you gifts from friends and former students, and...he was pretty sure there'd been a lamp, its shade a mosaic of multi-coloured glass, casting shifting patches of gold and green and blue on the walls and ceiling. Now it was covered in papers and quills and abandoned, half-used ink bottles, baskets of scrolls and ancient tomes with cracking covers — as though some kind of _work_ actually got done here.

He couldn't help but wonder if Snivels always took parent–teacher meetings here and, if so, whether he knew how..._weird_ it was, hosting such meetings in what was _obviously_ a working space like this. Almost as weird as just...sitting there, staring at him. It might have been a while since Sirius had done this whole _polite interaction _thing, aside from Wizengamot dragonshite — Little Bella was right, he was quite ready to be done with the whole thing, and Emma Granger probably did know more about the whole political situation than he did already, he really just didn't want to _admit _that she was right, so he was determined to stick it out for a few more weeks, at least.

Wait, what was he... Right, he hadn't done this for a while, but he was _pretty sure_ that after you got through the introductions and sat down and everything, there was supposed to be some offer of hospitality, not a two-minute long staring contest. Going on three. Seriously, what the hell! It wasn't like he was even trying to legilimise Sirius — he might not be able to _stop_ him, but he was pretty sure he was good enough at occlumency to know when someone was poking around the edges of his mind. Even someone as sneaky as Snivels. At least, he was when he wasn't _completely_ hung over and therefore half-asleep and nursing a massive headache.

Which he wasn't. He _was_ slightly _flat_ — Soma was kind of like Dreamless Sleep, made everything feel distant and unimportant, they'd called it the Chill Pill Potion back in the Seventies. He kind of hated it (in a distant, unimportant way), but being numb was better than actively hating _himself_ (in a much more visceral, immediate way). Everything about it felt _fake_, like it was just kind of covering up the lingering black mood he'd been in for weeks, and not very well at that, but it was enough to let him remember that he thought this was important, because...reasons. Harry-related reasons. Anyway, he was pretty sure it didn't affect his ability to notice mind magic being used on him, and Snivels wasn't. Which was kind of weird, really.

"Why are you _here_, Black?"

_Finally!_ Though...that wasn't exactly a question Sirius could answer. "You don't know?"

"What don't I know?" the greasy git asked, getting all tetchy with him.

"No, I wasn't implying— I mean, I know I wrote you because you mentioned it in your reply, but I was _really_ drunk and kind of...out of it at the time..." He'd been having one of those nights where everything seemed completely hopeless and miserable and just complete _shite_, and honestly he'd rather not have to deal with _existing_, even when there were no dementors around. The last two weeks or so had been generally _bad_ — he didn't do well alone (never had), and with the kids at school and Mira busy... He tried not to drink on really bad nights, because he _knew_ it only ever made it worse, but he must have been feeling especially keen on punishing himself for being the worst person ever, because he'd gone ahead and decided to do it anyway. "...so, _I_ don't know why."

Snivels raised an eyebrow at him in one of those classic, _did someone drop you on your head as a child, Black_ looks (which he'd probably copied from Evans). "If you hope to convince me that you are anything other than a raving lunatic—"

"Oh, no, I'm definitely a raving lunatic, just— Look, do you still have the letter?" Sirius gave him a smile that felt as fake as his interest in being here. He was pretty good at _acting_ like he wasn't completely dead inside, though, so maybe he'd pulled it off.

In any case, Snape passed a scroll to him with a flick of his fingers and a wandless banishing charm — _show-off_. He unrolled it warily, there was really no telling what he might've...

Oh.

Okay, that wasn't _so_ bad. At least, not in the actual shite he'd said. _Kind of_ embarrassing, but on a scale of embarrassing shite he'd done over the years, drunkenly rambling at Snivels about how Harry never told him anything, and Sirius was just a complete failure as anything resembling an adult, was...not that bad, really. Like...maybe a three? It probably wasn't even anything Snivellus hadn't already known, just, you know, _confirming_ it.

"Wow. I'm kind of shocked that you actually responded to this."

"Curiosity will undoubtedly be the end of me, eventually."

Right, so he wasn't going to tell Sirius why he wanted to see him. He _had_ to have a reason to want to see him — if he didn't, he would've just burnt this piece of trash, or maybe framed it as proof of Sirius's general patheticness or something, but he wouldn't have written back, demanding to speak to him in person. Which he apparently now had no intention of doing. Speaking to him. Or at least, not until Sirius told him whatever he'd been working up to in the letter. Reading between the lines, trying to figure out the underlying logic of his rambling (which _did_ exist...most of the time, even when he was completely pissed)... "I'm...pretty sure I wanted to apologise to you," he concluded.

Snivels's eyes narrowed in suspicion. "_Why_?"

"Ah, because I'm an incomparable arse and almost got you mauled by Moony back when we were teenagers? I mean, that _is_ the big one, isn't it? Pretty sure you got me back for everything else."

"You're also an incomparable idiot. Why did you suddenly decide that I deserve an apology for an act that occurred nearly two decades ago, one I am _well_ aware you aren't actually sorry for, and what does that have to do with..._any_ of your drunken ramblings?"

"Er... Right."

That was kind of complicated. Or, well...he had been thinking he ought to apologise in the first place because there were a couple of things he wanted from Snivels. Well, mostly just _information_ on a couple of things, but that was worth more than gold when you already had more gold than you could ever use. Which was simple enough. But then there was...

Okay, in the right light (a drunken, self-loathing light), they were practically family. Which didn't, of course, mean that Snivels couldn't still hate him — after all, Sirius had hated pretty much all the family he'd ever had — but it was really hard to completely ignore all the shite he'd grown up with, and even if family hated each other (even if they occasionally threw Unforgivables at each other), they should still be on speaking terms. Yes, _he_ had stopped speaking to the Blacks after he broke the Family Magic, but that was because he'd been trying to make it clear that _they weren't his family anymore_.

And he was kind of thinking that he and Snivels didn't really have a choice in the matter.

Harry obviously trusted him — more than he trusted Sirius, which was just..._endlessly galling_ — and Meda's daughter was shagging him apparently, when she wasn't chasing Bella all over the continent (because _that_ was going to go well), and...much as he hated to admit it, Sirius was _well_ aware that Evans would have named Snape as Harry's other godparent if he hadn't been a Death Eater at the time. (She'd actually suggested it even though he _was_ — mostly as a joke, Jamie would _never_ have agreed, even if Snivels _wasn't_ a Death Eater.) And since Snivelly seemed to be determined to look out for Harry for the sake of her memory, and Sirius actually _was_ his godfather, he had, he recalled rather hazily, concluded that they were basically co-parents. Really, _really_ estranged, House-of-Black-level dysfunctional co-parents. (And he couldn't really argue with his drunken past self about it now, he realised. By the sober, less-self-loathing light of day, it was even clearer that Snivels was a more responsible, functional adult than Sirius was — plus he had about twelve more years experience dealing with teenagers, and Harry still trusted him more, anyway.) And if they were going to be effectively sharing a kid, they probably should be able to be civil to each other.

He _probably_ shouldn't try to explain that, though. Contrary to popular belief, he did _try_ to avoid saying things that sounded completely mad most of the time. He also probably shouldn't open with a low-key freak out over Harry's ongoing Voldemort, er...vision/nightmare things, whatever. Because that _was_ what had prompted him to start thinking about Snivels in the first place. Harry had talked to the greasy dungeon bat about it when they first started, and he'd _supposedly_ told Harry and Blaise that the nightmares were nothing to worry about and he should start practising lucid dreaming to get them to stop — _supposedly_, because Sirius was pretty fucking sure _someone_ was lying about the _nothing to worry about_ part. (He wasn't certain whether Snivels had lied to Harry or _Harry_ was lying _to Sirius_...and he honestly suspected the latter.) But again, that would be one of those things that if he just started talking about it, he'd probably end up ranting incoherently about Evans fucking about with soul magic, sounding entirely insane and insulting Snivels's _One True Love_.

That was the sort of thing one needed to work up to.

Fortunately, there was one other thing he also needed to talk to Snivellus about, he could use that to establish some kind of interaction beyond the constant attempts to curse each other which had defined their relationship for the ten years between meeting each other on the train to Hogwarts and Sirius going to Azkaban. _Cooperative_ might have been the word he was looking for. "Little Bella says she's delegated the planning aspect of her plan to murder one Not-Professor Riddle to you. I want in."

He'd _tried_ to get other people to tell him what the _fuck_ was going on with the whole de Mort's Not Dead _thing_, but Bella hated repeating herself — even when she was 'repeating' herself to someone who definitely hadn't already heard it — and so did a _terrible_ job filling people in on any given situation. Meda was all respectable now, so didn't want to have anything to do with Dark Lords, undead or otherwise, and Cissy seemed to think the whole thing was stupid and doomed to failure, so obviously Bella hadn't told her anything.

Though, come to think of it, that might have been more because Cissy had dismissed the project on the grounds that Bella was just a kid and had no business trying to kill even a completely washed up Dark Lord, and Bella _hated_ being treated like a child or told that she had no business killing anyone she damn well pleased. (Which, okay, neither of them had really _known_ Bella when she was Little Bella's age, but Sirius was pretty sure that should be obvious.) And in any case, she had more urgent problems, like the fact that she'd fabricated an Imperius Defense which was now under fire because her idiot husband had gotten himself captured at the World Cup, wearing his bloody stupid lieutenant's mask and all. Bella said he'd done so on Cissy's orders, but Cissy wouldn't tell either of them _why_...probably because she (correctly) suspected that he would fuck up her plot, because _fuck_ Lucius Malfoy, seriously. (That and it was always funny to watch Cissy get caught in a lie.)

_Focus, Sirius! You're talking about killing de Mort! The planning thereof!_

Zee, unlike Narcissa, fully supported the execution of Thom de Mort — because he had fucked Bella over such that she'd chosen to abandon Zee and go sit in Azkaban for twelve years (apparently there were childhood compulsions involved) — but had relatively little to offer to said project, and so also wasn't really in the loop.

Snivellus raised an eyebrow at him — this one, Sirius was fairly certain, meant to indicate that this was an unexpected response, but that Snivels was far too cool to actually be _surprised_. "I wasn't aware that you were...in the know."

"Is that your way of asking me whether I know that she's _actually_ Bella, not just coincidentally uncannily similar to the original? Because yes, she did finally admit that. Gotta say, her old universe sounds kind of lame." (There was de Mort being an embarrassingly nerdy schoolteacher instead of the most evil bastard to ever exist, so they had that going for them, but other than that...)

So far as Sirius had gathered, Bella had had a minor freak-out over Harry getting between her and the Quidditch World Cup riot and Cissy trying to calm her down by reminding her of her duty to the House, which had led to Bella very nearly blasting her across the tent, because, well... Sirius didn't want to sound like he was _endorsing_ teenage temper tantrums — according to Zee, she'd gotten all glowy-eyed and everything — but Cissy _definitely_ should've known better. _She_ knew _exactly_ who Little Bella was, and where she'd come from, had done since before Yule, and Sirius refused to believe that she thought _Little_ Bella should have any better control over herself than _their_ Bella, and...

To be fair, he didn't really think Narcissa understood _needing_ to be a part of the chaos and violence the way Bella did — and Sirius, though he tried not to admit it — but Sirius didn't think he'd ever seen Bella actually _happy_ anywhere other than on a battlefield. Cissy _had_ to have known that getting between her and the first actual, proper battle she'd been anywhere near was a _terrible_ idea.

But he was rambling again. Zee had managed to defuse the situation by reminding Bella that all the shite that was driving her insane (and not in a fun way) — spending all summer trying (and mostly failing) to act (relatively) normal, keeping big secrets from as many people as possible, dealing with politics and shite — was all self-imposed. Which meant if she decided they weren't worth it, she _could_ just decide not to bother. And there _were _reasons she had adopted those habits in the first place, obviously, but giving herself a little slack wouldn't compromise the goals she'd prioritised over maintaining...what passed for sanity, for her. So when Sirius had asked her after the riot why the fuck she'd decided to help capture the instigators instead of letting them go to fight another day, she'd ended up telling him...

...pretty much everything, he thought. "I also know that she's a Black Mage dedicated to Eris; she and Eris re-wrote Bellatrix's personality over Walpurgis to get rid of de Mort's compulsions; Bella is running around with Greyback in France — apparently Greyback's wife owns one of our vinyards, now — and has no intention of coming back to Britain; and Little Bella accidentally killed a horcrux last month, after which you two went and killed all of de Mort's inferi _without me_, because you're both selfish, inconsiderate twats like that."

He also knew that Little Bella had been intending to re-write the past of her own universe when she'd left it, go back thirty years and start a bloody war — _Grindelwald's _war, to be precise. As far as he could tell, that goal hadn't really changed, though obviously the specifics would have to. He was pretty sure he ought to be more conflicted about that than he was, but looking around at how little the world had changed while he was in Azkaban (in some ways it had even gotten _worse_), he couldn't help but think that it was only a matter of time until Zee's ceasefire fell apart and they were right back where they'd been in the Sixties and Seventies, but with a lot more blood feuds to hash out.

"Also, Little Bella may have accidentally started a prank war with the original Bella by trapping her in the Dark a couple of weeks ago. Not actually sure if Bellatrix is going to retaliate, presumably she did something first, so they might be even, or, you know, close enough — I'm sure they both think their excessive approach to retaliation is entirely reasonable — but you may still want to keep an eye out for that, anyway. Just, you know, a heads-up."

Snivellus's left eye twitched, just a bit.

After another too-long silence, he apparently decided that he had _absolutely nothing_ to say on that issue. Which was kind of odd — Sirius thought it might be interesting, seeing what the two of them came up with to do to each other, and there would almost certainly be some kind of collateral damage, assuming Bella actually decided to retaliate. You'd think he'd appreciate the warning.

But no, after a long pause he simply dragged the conversation back on topic. "So...you've decided to apologise for attempting to murder me because you need something from me. I'm sure you can imagine my shock."

"Er...basically, yes. Though I think it's worth noting that I wasn't trying to murder you. If I was trying to _murder_ you, I wouldn't have used one of my best mates as the murder weapon — I'm not _that_ stupid!" Not to mention, you know, if he had been trying to actually _kill_ Snivels, he'd be _dead_. Granted, Sirius would probably have gotten caught, but Snivels _definitely_ wouldn't be here to whinge about _attempted_ murder. (Yes, he had failed to kill the Traitor, but that was entirely because he had underestimated the rat — Snivels hadn't exactly been shy about using his full range of skills in their little feud and he was definitely more _dangerous _than the Traitor, but Sirius would have taken that into account if he were actually trying to kill the slimy snake.) "I was _trying_ to get you expelled for trying to break into the Shack. It wasn't _my_ fault Jamie and Remus finally got Jamie's stupid ward-gate working that month. And yes, I will admit that I was totally okay with you dying when I found out about it, but I'm pretty sure you would've let _me_ walk into mortal danger just as easily. And in my defense, I was kind of mad, and possibly in the middle of a psychotic break, so—"

"I hope you realise that claiming familial insanity exempts you from any responsibility for your actions in order to _avoid_ apologising is, in fact, _not_ apologising."

...Well, _no_, it _wasn't_. Sirius just really _hated_ making apologies, especially when he meant them. "I'm sorry I tried to get you expelled, and I'm sorry that my _entirely non-lethal_ plan accidentally placed you in mortal danger, and that I did consider your death a potentially satisfactory solution to the problem I managed to convince myself needed to be solved in order to get back into Jamie's good graces. If it's any consolation, it didn't work."

Snivel's eyes narrowed, just a hint of confusion, there, maybe. "What do you mean it _didn't work_? As _I_ recall, you and Potter reconciled in the wake of your foray into...negligent homicide. I suppose I will give you that you wouldn't have wanted your werewolf executed."

Well, at least he was willing to give him _that_ much. Sirius winced slightly, thinking back on the sequence of events that had unfolded over the first two months of his sixth year at Hogwarts. "Well, _yeah_, Jamie forgave me, but only because he thought I was insane when I screwed Evans." He _hadn't_ been, though he'd had the sense not to correct that misconception. It wasn't as though he'd really been in his right mind, anyway — he had been _really _drunk, and really, _really_ high, and she had deliberately seduced him in an attempt to sabotage his and James's friendship in retaliation for stripping Snivels out by the lake after their Defence OWL, one that had _almost actually worked_. (She had _totally_ admitted it, clearly hadn't been able to resist the opportunity to gloat a little, though not to _James_, of course — manipulative, unfeeling bitch had just let him twist.) "And only _then_ because I spent every Saturday for the next three months with a mind healer, trying to get my head back on straight."

"They actually made you get _professional help_?" A hint of a smirk tugged at the corner of Snivels's lips — a promising sign, Sirius thought.

"Er, even _I_ couldn't get away with apparently attempting to kill someone without _any_ consequences at all. I mean, sure, Dumbledore liked me, but people tend to get _concerned_ when little Blacks start trying to kill people...even when they're not really _trying_ to kill people, just— You know what I mean. The done thing is normally to discourage us from doing anything that involves even the _possibility_ of a body count, can't imagine _why_."

He said it sarcastically, but he actually did kind of mean it — it wasn't as though most of them actually enjoyed killing _for the sake of killing_, like they were going to start killing everyone they could the moment they got their first taste of it. (Which was a silly assumption, but then, he supposed most people didn't know that they were involved in sacrificial subsumption rituals at the age of _seven_.) They just had a tendency to pit themselves against the most dangerous enemies they could find, at the highest _stakes_ they could find, and... Actually, in hindsight, that might explain a _lot_ of the antagonism between himself and the frankly terrifying Evans–Snape duo back in school. Completely aside from the thing with Jamie, they were practically the only members of his class who could hold their own in a proper feud — _especially_ when Cassie noticed what was going on around her long enough to help — so, when he thought about it... Huh.

"Black!" Snivels snapped, jolting him out of his mental tangent.

Er. Right. Yes. Apologising. "Anyway, I'm sorry. I promise I won't do it again. And if there's anything I can do to prove my sincerity to you, I would you name it." There. Done. An actual apology. (Sirius honestly couldn't remember the last time he'd made one, including an offer to make amends and all.)

Snivels just _stared_ again. It seemed longer, this time. "I will..._consider_ it," he said, eventually, when Sirius was nearly on the verge of dying of suspense.

"Good. Thank you. So...about that plot to kill the Dark Wanker once and for all?"

Snivellus sighed. "There is no _plot_, as such. This is the first I've heard of my having been appointed to design one. So far as I am aware, we are at the _gathering resources_ stage of the campaign — money and influence, information, allies, and so on. Aside from the Zabinis and myself, she has recruited young Ginevra Weasley and Theo Nott, the former because of the intelligence she holds, and the latter apparently by accident, being pathologically incapable of remembering who she's already brought in on any given secret. Mister Potter is aware, to some extent, of her activities — I understand he witnessed the aftermath of the destruction of the second horcrux, and Zabini has explained to him the fact that the Dark Lord used multiple horcruxes to survive Samhain of Eighty-One, but I don't believe that he fully understands that the junior Bellatrix intends to finish him off, nor has he been officially recruited to help.

"The senior Bellatrix is apparently uninterested in killing him herself, and the junior Bellatrix refuses to ask for her help in gathering information on the specifics of her former master's soul anchors. She almost certainly knows what they are, and where — and could probably finish the job herself in a few hours, if suitably motivated — but I gather she believes that Mister Riddle would find it more intolerable to be immortal and powerless than simply dead."

"Yes, well, that and Riddle's a British problem, isn't he. She's moved on. What _intelligence_ could little Ginny Weasley possibly have that makes it worth recruiting a twelve-year-old kid into this fight? She can't have much more experience than Harry." Most families, after all, were _not_ the Blacks, training their children to fight from the age of _three_. Molly hadn't even been entirely comfortable with Alice and Sirius giving little Bill one of Alice's old wands and teaching him a few basic self-defence charms back in Seventy-Nine. She hadn't _stopped_ them — they _had_ been in the middle of a bloody _war_, after all — but she clearly hadn't been comfortable with it.

"She was possessed by one of Riddle's horcruxes for the better part of her first year here at the school, giving her a unique perspective on the man — as well as access to memories of a part of his life even Bellatrix was not witness to, should she manage to organise them into something coherent despite her lack of formal occlumency training and resistance to external assistance in the matter."

"If that's your way of saying she doesn't want anyone else using legilimency to poke around in her head after being fucking _possessed_ for an entire year, _yeah_, I don't blame her! Wait, does that mean she hasn't talked to a mind-healer about it? Like, at all?"

Snivels raised an eyebrow at him. "Not so far as I am aware."

"Not even to, you know, _just_ talk?" Because not _all_ mind-healers insisted on using legilimency in their treatment. McKinnon, the one Sirius had been forced to see after almost accidentally killing Snivels and ruining Remy's life forever, hadn't. Snivellus just held that same expression. Obviously not. "Shite. What the _fuck_ was she thinking?"

"Bellatrix? I doubt it has occurred to her that exploiting traumatised children in pursuit of information on an undead Dark Lord could be considered problematic."

What? No, if anything, Little Bella probably thought she was being helpful, giving Ginny a chance to fight back against the monster who'd so thoroughly violated her. That was probably what _she_ would have wanted, if it had been her — it wasn't really a secret that Bellatrix had killed Cygnus, or why. He honestly wouldn't have expected her to do anything else for Ginny, especially when it could win her crucial information and required little to no effort on her part. "No, _Cassie_."

"Lovegood?"

"_Yes_, Lovegood. You know, the incredibly hot, incredibly intimidating one who used to run around the Forest shagging Evans and riding unicorns and totally not being dedicated to Artemis? now kills Dark Lords and takes on cursed teaching posts for fun? Yes, _that_ Cassie."

"I suspect I know her a good deal better than you ever did, Black," Snivels said drily, though a smirk was pulling at his lips. Probably at Sirius's description of her, which hadn't really been funny on purpose, but he'd take it. "What about her?"

"She _invited me to tea_," Sirius explained, scowling at a pile of mouldering potions texts, currently in use as a make-shift display plinth for an open scroll, held in place by a handful of crystal inkbottle stoppers. "Wanted to _catch up_, apparently. Incredibly awkward. Worse than _this_, even. At least you weren't off having grand adventures while I was sitting in Azkaban surrounded by dementors and wallowing in my own misery."

Snivels scowled at _him_. "No, I was sitting _here_, surrounded by idiot children, charged with the sisyphean task of actually _teaching_ them something. What does this have to do with...anything else?"

"Oh, right. Cassie suggested that I...I don't know, offer to teach the Weasley girl a few things. Auror things. Or, well, however much proper light battle magic a thirteen-year-old is actually capable of learning."

Sirius didn't really have the experience to guess how much that might be. Obviously he knew what he and Narcissa had been capable of at that age, but all of the Blacks tended to be a bit more powerful than the average mage, and starting at such a young age helped as well. Harry wasn't a good guideline, either — Sirius might not know how much a thirteen-year-old was normally capable of, but he was _pretty sure_ they couldn't all cast a fucking _patronus_. But then again, Molly's brothers had been two of the strongest fighters on either side of the war — not quite sorcerer-league, but the two of them had been able to hold their own against anyone short of Bella or Riddle himself — and Little Bella had had her 'minion' practising dueling with Theo Nott for the better part of a year now. She had actually described Nott as _probably better than me if I weren't a huge bloody cheater_, so Sirius had no idea _what_ the Weasley kid might be able to handle at this point.

"Apparently she's been trying to learn how to fight, almost got herself killed at the World Cup. Cass went off on some tangent about potential and how hardly _anyone_ does that sort of magic anymore, and the kid _has _potential, but Cassie doesn't really have the time to teach her anything outside of class, and really it shouldn't be her, anyway, because...reasons — she _had_ reasons, I just don't remember what they were — and, you know, it would be a _great_ idea if I did it instead, we _could_ use more proper warriors for the Light... You know, one of those long, rambly, Lovegood-ish monologues where you find yourself agreeing with her every step of the way, and then not knowing how you got suckered into agreeing to offer dueling lessons to a thirteen-year-old kid who _apparently _has serious mental trauma issues and thinks she's going to help _Little Bella_ kill a goddamned _Dark Lord_. She didn't _mention_ any of _that_.

"She _has_ to know, though, at least about the possession thing — that's the sort of thing that leaves a mark on your soul, you know, and if Cassie evaluated the kids' natural alignments—" Which she had, part of her reforming the Defense curriculum — sounded brilliant, Sirius wished someone had done that when _they_ were in school. "—you can bet your arse she's felt it. I just can't figure out what the _hell_ she was thinking, suggesting _I_ should volunteer to mentor her! If I was going to teach her proper light magic, I'd have to help her work through all that, and I'm about the _last_ person _anyone_ should be looking to for advice on, I don't know... It's just a _terrible_ idea, that's all."

He looked up, expecting Snivellus to nod, or say something, agree with him that he was the _last_ person who should be giving people advice on dealing with mental trauma. As far as he was concerned, it should be _beyond_ obvious that he _hardly_ had his own shite together, mentally speaking. No one, least of all Snivels, had _ever_ accused him of being _sane_. But he wasn't nodding, or giving any sort of expression that suggested he might think Cassie had lost her own mind, suggesting something as _completely daft_ as this.

Quite to the contrary, a cruel smirk was slowly spreading across his features, a calculating look in his eye. "Oh, I don't know, possibly that you have...let's call it a _unique perspective_ on overcoming a certain degree of inherent darkness to serve the light. Or that you might know a thing or two about dealing with mental and emotional trauma, given that you haven't offed yourself yet despite your entire life being one long succession of painful failures." That was...quite possibly the most complimentary thing Snivels had ever said to him. So backhanded _Cissy_ would be impressed, but still. "Or possibly that you could stand to deal with a little responsibility for the first time in your life."

"You can't _possibly_ be serious."

"_Oh_, but I _am_. Yes, the first step in the plan to dispose of Riddle now requires that you take on the duty of—"

"Knock it off, Sni– _Snape_. This isn't funny."

"Who's having fun, Black? If you wish to prove to me the sincerity of your resolution to make up for the incident of your childish negligence which so very nearly _resulted in my death_, you will take on this responsibility and acquit yourself as an adult, helping Miss Weasley work through the trauma of having been possessed by Tom Riddle, and in the process work through your own childhood issues, perhaps even developing a degree of maturity along the way."

That was just...

Okay, maybe that did _kind of_ make sense, but Sirius was _positive_ Snivels was just using his apology as an excuse to force him to do this because he was a cruel bastard who didn't give a single flying fuck about _Miss Weasley's_ general wellbeing, if it meant Sirius was going to have to suffer through _feelings_, for however long this farce ended up taking. Quite possibly _years_ — taking on what amounted to an unofficial apprentice was _not_ a small task.

"I hate you, Snivels."

"No more than I, you, Black. _Bellatrix, my office, now!_"

"What the hell was _that_?" Little Bella asked, materialising out of thin air, rubbing at her left ear.

"And here I thought you were our resident expert on shadow magic," Snivels said smugly.

"Oh, shut up, what do you—"

"What are you, a fucking house elf, now?" Sirius blurted out, cutting her off.

"House elves don't use shadow magic. Also, no, I haven't thought I was an elf since I was, like, three. Keep up, Siri."

"Wait, you actually... Is _that_ why you don't let anyone call you Trixie?" Because _Trixie_ was, he had just realised, _totally_ a house elf name. And since the only person who _was_ allowed to call her Trixie was Zee, who was also the only person she really ever _listened_ to, that kind of put their entire relationship into a whole new light, didn't it.

Bella glared at him, ignoring the question in a way that made him almost _certain_ he was right. (He wondered if Zee knew.) "Why are you _here_? I thought you two hated each other."

"_We do_," they said, coincidentally in unison, before glaring at each other...also coincidentally in unison.

"Uh _huh_. Well, whatever you're meeting about, I didn't do it."

"What did you do, Bellatrix?" Snivellus asked, overly exaggerating his tone of exasperated resignation.

"_Nothing_. It's just, normally when the Head of Slytherin is meeting with the person nominally responsible for me, it's because he thinks I've done something. I mean, Professor Riddle was about as likely to have Ciardha over for tea as you are to want to see Siri, so. I didn't do it."

"Actually you did, unless I was hallucinating you telling me to go bug Snape about killing Not-Professor Riddle, because you can't plan anything for shite."

Little Bella just blinked at him for about half a second. "Okay, fine, then I did do it, but the whole point was I wouldn't have to do the whole talking about things everyone already knows _thing_, so why am _I_ here?"

"_You_ are here to fetch a certain Weasley for us."

"You're going to have to be more specific, Your Honor. Also, the fun Weasley went back to Egypt, so if it's that one you're going to have to send him a bloody owl or something."

Snivels directed a look of pure _scorn_ at Little Bella, who gave him her most innocent smile in response. "Your idiot cousin has something to discuss with _Miss_ Weasley. Please bring her here."

"You know, you could have asked an actual house elf to do that instead of screaming in my bloody ear. Or even asked me to bring her with me instead of going back for her."

"She might have been engaged in activities best kept from the elves' attention, mightn't she. And you doubtless would have brought her through the Shadows with you had I not brought you here first to remind you that dragging humans under the Dark is existentially terrifying, and Miss Weasley would almost certainly be in no state to discuss anything afterward — so bring her here via the _stairs_."

"But _Sev_, there are just _so many_ stairs!"

"Go, and you may stay and contribute to the remainder of the conversation, rather than spending the next twenty minutes eavesdropping and being terribly frustrated by your inability to say anything without admitting that you're spying on us."

She glared at him for another moment before muttering, "_Fine_," followed by a bit of Elvish Sirius _thought_ might have been something along the lines of, "but I'm not an elf," possibly with a couple of explicatives in there somewhere. (His Elvish was _very_ rusty, and he'd never spoken it very well, anyway — Walburga hadn't left him and Reg alone with the elves nearly as much as Auntie Dru had the girls.) Then she vanished into nothingness again.

"Okay, how the _fuck_ did you do that?"

"Do what?"

"Get her to do what you wanted her to do! She _never_ listens to _me_."

"That would be because she has no respect for you. And here I thought you grew up with house elves."

Sirius snorted, almost certain that was a joke. If Bella's psychology was more elf-like than human — which _did_ make kind of a _lot_ of sense, he couldn't shake it now — he could see her having sort of attached herself to Zee, using her as a guideline for acceptable behavior in much the same way elves attached themselves to humans to limit their own magic, purely for reasons of self-preservation. She didn't have that kind of respect for Snivels, either, though, to just do things because he said she ought to or not. "Not like she did. I mean, I knew she and Meda were practically raised by the elves, but... How did you do it, really?"

"How did you spend your entire childhood living with Narcissa and not learn how to manipulate people?"

How the hell did Snape know anything about his childhood? Oh, wait, Cissy had probably told him, back in school. Or Reg, they'd been close, hadn't they? Never mind. "Oh, I can manipulate _people_ just fine. Bella's not _people_. Cissy can't get her to listen to _her_, either."

"Don't be an idiot, Black, of course she's a person."

"Maybe it was a fluke," he suggested, goading the Slytherin just a bit. (Snivels, unlike Bella, _was_ 'people', and relatively easy to manipulate at that. He had always _hated_ the implication that he'd just gotten lucky at _anything_.)

"It wasn't a _fluke_." _Ha, I win_. "Her priorities and motivations are admittedly rather different than the average human's, but they do _exist_, and they're hardly _complex_. If you find a way to link the behavior you wish her to perform with an outcome she finds preferable to the alternative — or conversely, find a way to make any other alternative less appealing — she will do as you ask. As would _anyone_. Participating in our conversation is far more entertaining than simply spying on us, and that conversation simply cannot take place without Miss Weasley's presence. It is possible that she only relayed the message before _walking _back down here, but— _Expecto patronum_," he snapped, cutting himself off.

A silver doe erupted from the tip of his wand, drawn so suddenly Sirius wouldn't have had time to react if he'd been casting an offensive spell. It bounded into a shadowy corner, whereupon Bella stumbled out of it, scrambling away from the light construct more clumsily than Sirius had ever seen her do _anything_.

"_Aah!_ Fuck you, Your Honor!"

It herded her toward the centre of the room as Snape continued to speak, deliberately ignoring the fact that he'd caught her out. "I've already informed her that if I have reason to suspect she _is_ spying on me, I will begin casting a patronus along with my other anti-eavesdropping spells. Being so caught out would be both painful and embarrassing, and she can _hardly_ imagine I wouldn't follow through on said threat." He turned to look at her as the patronus advanced yet nearer, raising an eyebrow as though to say _do we understand each other, now?_

"Very fucking funny, Your Honor — put it out!" she practically snarled at him, her wand in her hand, but took another step back, pinning herself against a bookcase.

"After all, it _was_ her counterpart who so _thoroughly_ demonstrated the importance of following through on one's threats, lest one's authority be continually flouted."

"Yes, fine! No spying on sadistic bastards! Got it!"

Snape allowed the construct to advance far enough to prod her shoulder with its snout, drawing a pained yelp from her even as he dismissed it. "If you forget, I shall be only too pleased to repeat this little demonstration."

"Wait, that's it? You just threaten to cast a bloody patronus at her if she doesn't do as you tell her?" Sirius cackled. "Brilliant!"

Little Bella scowled, rubbing her shoulder. "No, _normally_ we reach a rational, mutually beneficial agreement. Believe me, if he tried to use that thing as coercion, I _would_ find some way to make it just as unpleasant for him as it is for me."

"Uh _huh_. And if I were to call that bluff?"

"I'm pretty sure you have to be a special kind of fucked in the head to use a _Patronus Charm_ to _torture a child_, Sirius. Especially one who you have a responsibility to protect. Unless you think you can maintain the proper state of mind to keep that thing going while using it to do the exact _opposite_ of what it's meant to do, I'm gonna say you've got nothing. I did tell Gin to come down here, though, so—"

"You're not a child, though, _Trixie_. And protecting the kids is your job, not mine."

She shrugged. "Still don't think you can do it. And if you call me Trixie again, I'll curse you so you can't get it up for a month."

Well _someone_ was in a shite mood. "_Excuse me_?"

"You heard me. See, that's how this works. One person sets out a consequence for certain actions on the part of the other person — consequences they're actually capable of enacting, obviously — and then the second person has to decide if it's worth it to do the thing anyway. Though I didn't actually think Sev _would_ go and start throwing patroni around — don't imagine Lovegood will be very happy with you if you accidentally burn her pet vampire half to death."

Snivels, apparently, was unconcerned. "Anastasia knows better than to lurk in the shadows of my office uninvited. Unlike _some_ people I could name."

Little Bella rolled her eyes, an awkward silence settling over the three of them. Or at least, it felt awkward to Sirius. After a few seconds he asked, "Vampire?"

"She could _hardly_ take on apprentices to help cover her classes," Snivels pointed out. "I understand she specifically chose a teaching assistant who could demonstrate the dark half of her curriculum."

"Well, no, I get that, that makes sense." Also, since _Anastasia_ was a female name, they were probably shagging. "But, does Dumbledore know? I mean, he hasn't changed _that_ much while I was gone. Er, has he?"

"If you mean has our esteemed Headmaster taken up the cause of Vampire Equality along with his asinine Werewolf Rights banner, no. However, Cassie hasn't changed much either, so I can't imagine she's terribly concerned about his opinion on the matter."

"Also, they're shagging," Bella added, spinning one of the guest chairs around to sit on it backwards. (_Called it_.) "And she's one of the vampires who were born, not made. Dumbles may not _like_ it, her being here, but even he has to admit _Castalia Lovegood_ isn't exactly likely to invite someone into the school who might be a threat to the little kiddies — and Miss Stacey is almost as soft as Professor Wolf Wolf, anyway. If I were him, I'd be _way_ more worried about Lovegood going nuts trying to do the same thing every day for ten months." Yeah, Sirius could see that. "I did manage to think of an appropriate _thanks for saving my stupid arse even though I probably wouldn't actually have died_ gesture, by the way. I'm sharing my acromantulae with her," she declared magnanimously.

"How kind of you," Snivels noted.

Before Sirius could point out that the giant, sentient, man-eating spiders didn't actually belong to Bella — or that Cassie would probably have found them pretty quickly herself, given that she'd spent approximately _all_ of her free time out in the Forest when they'd been students — there was an impatient knock on the door of Snivellus's inappropriately practical and inhospitable office.

Snivels opened it with a wandless charm, because he hadn't become any _less_ of a show-off in the past twenty minutes. "Miss Weasley. Come in."

She did, shivering slightly as the aura of dark magic that accompanied that stupid starfire charm surrounded her. The dungeon bat apparently noticed that too — not terribly surprising, he _was_ a legilimens. What _was_ surprising was that he actually seemed to _care_, replacing the dark pinpricks of light with several perfectly neutral (and much brighter) globes. That was...much more decent of him than Sirius might have expected.

"Er...Professor Snape? Lyra said you wanted to talk to me? Is this about my essay...?" She sounded uncertain, but somehow deliberately so, Sirius thought, her confident posture at odds with the hesitance in her voice. In fact, she looked much the same as she had when he'd seen her at the World Cup, in muggle jeans and a plain black tee-shirt, fiery hair falling over her shoulders in striking contrast. Her head was cocked to one side in apparent confusion, but her eyes were hard, guarded, her body tense as though prepared to go for her wand at the slightest provocation.

"No, I have been fortunate enough not to be tasked with marking the pathetic attempts at research your class has submitted for evaluation," Snivels said smoothly, as though he wasn't the one who coordinated said tasking.

"_Haven't been tasked _in this case meaning he fobbed it off on Éanna. You can tell by the way the marginalia are actually constructive criticism, rather than calling you a stupid twat for not already having a mastery in the subject."

Sirius sniggered, earning him a dark glare. It was still _endlessly_ hilarious that Dumbledore had thought _Severus Snape_ would make a good Potions professor. If it wasn't undoubtedly as torturous for the students as it was for Snivels, he might have thought the Old Goat had intended it as a punishment for the greasy Death Eater — he'd been rather notorious, back in school, for his hatred of tutoring.

"In fact I believe Lord Black has something he would like to ask you about," Snivels said, choosing not to address what was likely a _perfectly accurate_ characterisation of his marking.

The girl turned smoothly to fix him with an impassive, slightly curious look. "What is it?"

Oh.

_Shite_.

Now he actually had to find some way to invite her to become his student — in a subject he'd never _taught_, even if he was more than capable of _practising_ it — without sounding like a complete _creep_, inviting a third-year girl to come over to his house and _practise dueling_, which— He didn't know if it still was, but in _his_ day, that had _definitely been a euphemism_.

Okay, judging by the way Bella smirked as she said, "He wants you to come over and _practise dueling_ with him," it probably was. "I'd take him up on it, he's really _very_ good."

"I— _Not like that_!" he blurted out, only to have the Weasley girl look at him as though he'd lost his mind. So either it _wasn't_ still a euphemism, Bella just thought it was because she was from _Nineteen Sixty-Three_ (he still forgot that, sometimes), or Ginevra hadn't caught it despite Bella's insinuating tone. Fabulous.

Sirius briefly wondered whether he ought to tell Bella that it wasn't nearly as normal to go around implying that they were sleeping together as he and Mira made it seem. People who didn't know them might get the wrong idea. And it _was_ the wrong idea, because attractive as he might find her, he was enough of an adult to realise that screwing his mad, fourteen-year-old cousin was a _terrible_ idea — _and actually say 'no'_, even during the post-battle crash that had followed the World Cup Riot. (James and Remus would be _so_ proud of him.) Anyway, it wouldn't be nearly as funny if people didn't at least _wonder_ whether there was something going on, but if they started taking it _too_ seriously some of them (Harry came to mind) might actually try to do something about it, and that would be awkward as hell.

_No, Sirius, _focus_, damn it! And _not _on the look on Harry's face if (when) he realises that Black Incest Jokes aren't really entirely jokes when they're made _by Blacks_..._

(It looked like Snivels was filling her in on that particular fact, anyway, throwing up unidirectional anti-eavesdropping charms between them and smirking at Bella, saying something that made her flip Sirius off before deliberately turning her back to him to chat with Snivellus.)

"Um. Cassie— Ah, Professor Lovegood, I mean, mentioned that you were interested in studying light battle magic. And, ah...that I might be a good person to teach you. If you are. Interested, I mean."

Snivellus smirked at him over Bella's shoulder, pushing a thought at him smoothly enough that Sirius had second thoughts about whether he would have noticed him legilimising him earlier. _Oh, how the mighty have fallen..._ along with a memory of him chatting up some girl whose name he didn't remember.

_SHUT UP SNIVELS, and GET OUT OF MY HEAD_, he thought, as loudly and pointedly as he could. The slimeball winced slightly. _Ha_.

He _did_ kind of have a point, though, Sirius wasn't sure he'd managed to make _that_ awkward an offer to anyone about _anything_ since he was about twelve. "What I mean to say is, I heard about the trouble you got into at the World Cup. Bella says that you're serious about learning to fight, but the guy she has teaching you now is a dark mage, so you're going to need a different teacher when you move past the basics, and Cassie mentioned the other day that you've got the potential to be a _really_ good light battlemage." The girl's eyes went wide at that. Obviously she knew the difference between being a duelist and being a _real_ fighter, but just to be clear, "I'm not talking like hit wizard shite — when Cassie says _battlemage_ she means someone like herself, the kind of witch who can hold her own against an actual dark sorcerer if she has to."

"But..." the girl said — objecting, Sirius thought, entirely out of reflex, simply because the idea of someone as awe-inspiring as Cassie saying that you can and should follow in her footsteps seemed a bit absurd. She didn't seem to have an actual objection, anyway. (Who _wouldn't_ want to be Cassie fucking Lovegood when they grew up?) "...Are you serious? She actually _said_ that?"

Sirius literally bit his tongue to avoid a knee-jerk _yes, Sirius Black, we've met_, just nodding instead. "She also said that since there are only about a dozen people in Britain who use primarily or exclusively light magic and actually have any practical field experience to speak of, and her plate's already full teaching at Hogwarts, I might offer to teach you some more advanced light combat spells. You know, the sort of thing that would give you an edge if you're planning on running off looking for trouble," he added, smirking as he recalled Mira's description of the girl when they'd found her in the riot — running on stubborn determination and not much else after coming to the aid of a young mother and her children, almost getting herself killed in the process, absolutely exhausted and still trying to help. Reminded him of Alice. "So, I just thought I'd make the offer. No need to—"

"Yes," she said, cutting him off with determined excitement that reminded him even _more_ of Alice. Specifically, on their first day of Auror training, right before he'd given her a wry smirk and pointed out that this was probably going to be the hardest thing she'd ever done, and she, still grinning with excitement, had told him to go fuck himself, she wasn't backing out _now_.

"Er, I was going to say you don't have to decide right now, take some time and think about it—"

"I don't need time," she insisted, slightly too quickly, bouncing slightly on her toes despite obviously _trying_ not to look like Christmas had just come early. "Or to think about it, or whatever. _Yes_. Let's do it. I want to learn."

Well...okay, then.

"Great!" he exclaimed, with an enthusiasm he wouldn't even really feel if he _wasn't_ currently slightly drugged. In fact, if he wasn't totally chill at the moment, he'd probably be freaking out, because he had _no_ idea what he was doing and, unlike _most_ of the time when he didn't know what he was doing, _he_ wasn't the only one who would suffer if flying by the seat of his pants ended with him crash landing in a whomping willow or something. (Harry, for all he tried to deny it, had had a few _very_ Marauder-esque adventures in his first few years at Hogwarts.) Sirius was the _last_ person who should be helping _anyone_ deal with having been possessed by a fucking horcrux, okay, and the closest he'd ever gotten to teaching was helping his fellow Auror recruits back when they were in Academy together. Which really wasn't very close at all. He'd be the first to admit that he'd been a head case _before_ spending a dozen years in fucking Azkaban, and the whole reason he was here in the first place was that stupid, drunken ramble about how he wasn't anything resembling a competent, responsible adult-like person!

Granted, it wasn't entirely unexpected that _Snivels_ would give him some impossible task, set him up to fail, but this whole thing had been _Cassie's_ idea! And much as Cassie might enjoy rubbing his nose in his own shortcomings, he'd been under the impression she, you know, _gave a shite_, when it came to the safety and wellbeing of children. And quite frankly, Ginevra would be lucky if she didn't end up even _more_ fucked in the head, taking _his_ advice on trying to deal with emotional shite.

Case in point, he was _still_ incapable of being the bigger man and telling Severus Snape to fuck off instead of accepting this _ridiculous_ compensatory challenge which he _knew_ could not _possibly_ end well. That, in and of itself, should be proof that he was _not_ qualified to do the fucking job.

And he _definitely_ couldn't back out now, not with her looking at him like _that_, like this was the best thing that had happened to her in who knew how long. (She even looked a little like Alice, but, she _was_ her niece...) "You know this is probably going to be the hardest thing you've ever done, right? Learning this sort of shite was no picnic at eighteen, with the constant threat of death looming over us."

She crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow at him in a way that said she knew _exactly_ what he was trying to do, and she was having _none_ of it. "I think I heard somewhere that nothing worth doing is _easy_."

_Fuck you, Cassie._

* * *

_Okay, this is the last one in our buffer. From now on, we'll be posting scene-by scene as we finish them. No promises on how often that'll be, I've been having insomnia problems again. —Lysandra_


	13. Just Saying Hello

Hermione walked into her dorm room and froze, barely inside the threshold.

From her first day here, Hermione had always been rather...ambivalent, about the dorms. The furnishings were perfectly fine, she supposed — the beds were comfortable enough (if a little strange, shrouded in magically-woven cloth and surrounded by curtains), the chair at the little desk not amenable to sitting on for _too_ long (which could be solved with cushioning charms), storage space for clothes and books and things adequate but a little on the small side (which could be solved with space-expansion charms). It wasn't _luxurious_, not by any means, but not particularly bad, she didn't mind.

No, it was her roommates who had always been the problem. Even just the idea of _having_ roommates. Hermione was an only child, okay, she was used to having her own room. She _did_ have a couple cousins around her age — Aimée was closest, at two and a half years younger — but they _lived in France_. The only time they saw each other was when they were both visiting their grandmother, around Christmas or over the summer, and Aimée lived close enough to go home every night, while Hermione slept in...well, Aimée's father, Rémy, his old bedroom, at their grandmother's house.

It was honestly hard for Hermione to think of times she'd _ever_ shared a bedroom with anyone else. Her parents a few times, staying at hotels here and there. One summer, when Hermione had been...seven or eight, maybe? Anyway, the whole family had gone on a trip to Greece one year, and Hermione had ended up sharing a room with Aimée, along with their aunt Tienne and cousin Mailys. (Mailys had been the adult in the room, Hermione's grandmother had had her youngest child _very_ late, Tienne was less than four years older than her.) That had been for about a week, and it had been _very_ awkward — she liked Tienne well enough, but she _could_ be a bit a much, especially in such close proximity for that long. (She hardly knew Mailys, and Aimée had been five at the time, and thus very boring.) Other than that, she couldn't really think of anything.

Honestly, if Hermione had known there was a virtually one hundred per cent chance she'd have to share a room with people — Slytherin was the _only_ house where people got their own room, and muggleborns never went there (Rachel was the first since before the war) — she might have hesitated a bit longer before agreeing to go. She would have still gone _somewhere_, because it was _magic_, but there _had_ been other options, even if it had taken some badgering from her parents before McGonagall would admit it.

The Academy of Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín had seemed perfectly acceptable, even if Hermione had absolutely no idea how to properly pronounce it. (Irish Gaelic was ridiculous sometimes.) In some ways, it'd actually sounded superior to Hogwarts — they had more diversity in available subjects, if nothing else. The problem was... Well, there _wasn't_ a border on the magical side, so it didn't _really_ matter that it was in Ireland, but the person Mum had written had said a significant proportion of the classes were in Gaelic. The Mastery program was mostly in English, but if she wanted to take advantage of that greater diversity of options, she would need to become proficient in Gaelic — the standard language the mages used, which was apparently closely related to Irish and Scots Gaelic on the muggle side, but not quite identical to either, due to a few hundred years of drift — and she would have to do it quickly. By the time she managed to close the language gap...

But Hermione had _seriously_ considered going to Beauxbatons. She and her parents had even gone to an event at the school for prospective muggleborns and their families, it'd been a very close thing. Beauxbatons didn't use English at all, but the language barrier was actually less than it'd be at the Academy — she'd never _taken a class_ in French, but she'd been speaking it for literally longer than she could remember, it wouldn't be a problem. In the end, she'd decided the place was...too _big_, to put it briefly. Beauxbatons was _huge_, more like a sprawling university campus than a secondary school — of course, they did have a Mastery program, so they were also technically a university — and just outside the gates was what Hermione now knew was a large city by magical standards, bustling and colourful and noisy and _big_. Hogwarts, squirrelled away in isolation somewhere in the Scottish Highlands, had seemed far less...distracting.

Of course, that was before she'd known how terribly Hogwarts was managed, how frankly _incompetent_ much of the staff was, that she'd be stuck sharing a room with some of the...well, _bitchiest_ girls she'd ever met. If Hermione had known all that, she would be in France right now.

(Aquitania, technically, she still forgot the borders on the magical side were different sometimes.)

It had been...uncomfortable, just the idea of it. Before Hermione had even known how terrible they would be, that very first night, she remembered the other girls, just, changing into their nightclothes out in the open, still cheerily chattering, while Hermione had awkwardly slunk away into the bathroom to change in private. She knew now that British magical society had _very_ different ideas of decency and modesty — due to the lessened influence of Christianisation, she assumed — they thought nothing of changing in front of each other, even going to and from the showers without a stitch on, especially in single-sex environments like this one, it was _mortifying_. Apparently, in certain very specific contexts (tight-knit cliques like quidditch teams, for example), they were equally shameless in mixed-sex groups, and that was just bloody _weird_. Hermione had been completely blind-sided by her roommates being so comfortable, just, walking around naked, she'd never gotten used to it.

(It was still weird to think about, because mages were even _more_ prudish than normal people sometimes. They were much stricter about what was acceptable to wear in public — a vest and knee-length skirt that might be perfectly acceptable in Oxford would be _positively scandalous_ to purebloods. They split dormitories by sex, and they clearly thought it would be inappropriate to not...but mixed-sex quidditch teams _showered together_, and this was seemingly fine. It was very confusing.)

And it wasn't just the apparent disregard for whether they were properly dressed (in private) or not, no, sharing space at all was difficult. Hermione was used to having her own space she could do whatever she wanted with, and while that had still _mostly_ been the case — they'd all generally stayed out of each other's sections of the shared room — it wasn't really the same thing. It's just... They were _there_, all the time, she'd always felt like she was being watched, even if she was technically alone at the moment. And even if they _didn't_ go through her things, she was always uncomfortably aware of the fact that they _could_, at any time — especially after, early in second year, Lavender actually _had_, mockingly dismantling Hermione's entire wardrobe, the other girls giggling and coming up with cruel comments of their own, while Hermione had been sitting at her desk trying to read, but she couldn't concentrate, they'd been too loud and irritating, and she'd been too humiliated and _angry_ and...

They'd never touched her school things. That was something, she guessed.

(She hated those girls. She didn't want to, she didn't _like_ feeling like this, but she couldn't help it, she didn't think she'd ever hated _anyone_ this much, they were _awful_.)

There were times when she'd seriously considered transferring to Beauxbatons, and the other students were a significant part of why. Once the other girls had started being truly awful, about halfway through September, right around her birthday first year — once the bullying _outside_ the dorm had really started up, because she had the temerity to be intelligent and talented while also being a _muggleborn_ — it'd been a constant thought at the back of her head. She didn't _have_ to put up with this, she didn't _need_ to be here. She _could_ leave. But, she hadn't been able to bring herself to tell her parents how bad it was. She must have inherited some portion of Mum's stubbornness, because she hadn't wanted to give them the satisfaction, she hadn't wanted to _quit_, no, she'd make it through the year, at least. She wouldn't _give up_.

If she hadn't become friends with Harry and Ron (mostly Harry), she probably would have left after first year. She really hadn't had any other reason to come back, not when Beauxbatons was still an option. Even with them, she'd _still_ seriously considered it, especially with the insanity going on with the Chamber of Secrets, she...

She couldn't _quit_. She just _couldn't_. No matter how much she'd hated it here, sometimes.

Third year, though, third year had been a _lot_ better. By that point, she'd managed to make a small handful of friends — Harry and Ron (mostly Harry), Neville, Susan and Hannah (a little), Lisa and Morag (kind of) — which did make it easier to deal with people being awful. A lot of the stupid racist bullies had tired of her, with a few notable exceptions, but even they were more cautious, since she knew how to hex back now, and had a few friends behind her. Dealing with that was practically a thing of the past now, there'd been a _sharp_ drop in people messing with her after Lyra had humiliated Malfoy in front of the whole school.

After all, people might not think very much of making the awkward, friendless, swotty mudblood miserable, but _nobody_ wanted to mess with Lyra Black's girlfriend.

Lyra had made her living situation _much_ more tolerable as well, even if it still hadn't been perfect. In some ways, living with Lyra was still awkward and embarrassing, but there was _absolutely_ no doubt that it was an improvement over the year before. In most ways, anyway. Lyra might not leave her alone to read as much as her previous roommates had, but it wasn't like she was going out of her way to make her miserable for no reason, and when she _did_ interrupt her it was usually for something interesting, at least. (Of course, for the most part, she'd rather do her classwork with Lyra around, even if it meant she got through it slower, she was always good to talk things over with.) Lyra _did_ have less respect for her privacy — stealing the time turner and her habit of wearing Hermione's clothes (transfigured to fit) without even asking stood out — but she wasn't doing any of it out of cruelty, she simply had absolutely no respect for boundaries of any kind. It was still irritating, sometimes, but she wasn't being _mean_, just thoughtless.

Adding Gin in the latter half of the year had made little difference. Hermione had offered to let her move in with them as a solution to her problems with her own roommates, even while she wasn't at all certain she'd be comfortable with having Gin around, but it'd turned out fine enough. Gin very much kept to herself. Pretty much every time she opened her mouth, it was with _something_ sarcastic — lately, about Hermione and Lyra, and what they might or might not be getting up to while Gin wasn't looking, which was embarrassing but harmless — but she spent most of her time studying or practising her dueling stuff, even when she _was_ in the dorm she was completely inoffensive. Hermione wasn't certain they were really _friends_, she didn't think they talked enough to be, but it was fine, Hermione didn't mind her being around at all.

Everything else might be an improvement but, when it came to the modesty stuff, it was almost worse. Lyra had _even less_ shame than the other girls did...which made perfect sense, when she thought about it — she was pretty sure Eris had taken away Lyra's ability to even feel embarrassment, so. Much like the other girls, she clearly thought nothing of changing right out in the open, but, _unlike_ the other girls, she thought equally little of just...sitting around naked...just because?

Okay, no, not _really_ just because, she meant... Like, Lyra needed a _reason_ to do something, see. Say, if she had just taken a shower — or, a bath, actually, she seemed to prefer baths if she had the time for it — and she wouldn't be going out into the public areas of the castle, where she was expected to be at least marginally presentable, she apparently didn't think it worth the effort to get dressed. It wasn't unusual for Hermione to return to their room for the evening to find Lyra sitting at her desk or on her bed, her hair still slightly damp, quietly reading, completely naked. Sometimes she slept in the nude too, and _that_ was new, none of the other girls had done that. Never in the colder months though — she'd stolen Hermione's pyjamas to lounge around in instead, because she had no respect for boundaries — but in the warmer months?

It wasn't like she was being _intentionally_...provocative, or anything. (At least, Hermione didn't _think_ she was, it was hard to tell sometimes.) Lyra just had absolutely no shame whatsoever.

At some point, it had gotten _very_ distracting. Since coming back for fourth year, she...

Okay, Hermione would admit that she'd had mixed feelings about the idea of returning to their dorm this year. She'd assumed they'd still have their semi-private room (shared with Gin), since someone would have had to knock out the wall Hogwarts had put in to return it to normal — if they did, Lyra would probably split it up again regardless. Which was fine, she did prefer it this way, by a whole hell of a lot. But, well, things were just slightly more complicated than they'd been last year, weren't they?

She was _sharing a bedroom_ with _her girlfriend_.

Her _very_ pretty, randomly nude girlfriend.

It was...

It was distracting, to put it mildly.

She'd been in the habit of, just, not looking, when people were changing and such — if only out of vicarious embarrassment. It was somewhat more difficult to avoid looking last year, with Lyra sometimes sitting around casually not wearing anything, eventually she'd gotten...acclimated, she guessed. It was still somewhat awkward, and just _weird_, but Lyra was weird, she tried not to let it bother her. But, eventually...

She'd _tried_ not to stare, at first, toward the end of last year. It hadn't helped that she'd still been _very_ ambivalent about the feelings she'd been developing for Lyra, she... Well, whatever, didn't matter. She hadn't _wanted_ to...be distracted, so she'd tried to pretend she wasn't...

A couple days into this year, she'd realised... Well, Lyra didn't give a damn, did she? And they _were_ dating now, and Lyra clearly didn't think twice about it, so it was probably fine if Hermione just...looked. A little.

More than a little, really. She'd caught herself staring, multiple times. (Gin had caught her staring more than a couple of times.)

Lyra was, just, _very_ distracting, these days.

(Hermione was in _so_ much trouble...)

So, when it came down to it, Lyra and Gin setting up a circle of candles in the middle of the floor was _hardly_ the most uncomfortable thing she'd walked into her dorm room to find. But it did still take her aback, a bit.

It could be weirder. At least they were both dressed.

"What are you doing?"

Lyra glanced up from the almost-completed circle, face split with that trademark grin of hers — wide and toothy, full of such energy it was honestly incomprehensible, so cheerful it was almost fake. "There you are, Maïa. Good, we're almost ready, come on."

A corner of her lips twitched. "That wasn't an answer to my question, Lyra." She obeyed anyway, drifting further into the room. Better than standing in the doorway like an idiot.

Focused on placing her last candle, Lyra didn't respond, Gin got there first. "Black finally realised no one would have introduced you to Magic before."

Somehow, Hermione heard the capital letter on _Magic_, which was the only reason she wasn't entirely confused. She was still _partially_ confused, though. "I don't know what that means."

"Old tradition," Lyra said, popping back fully upright, her hair flipping over a little with the quick motion. "On a child's birthday, the family will do a little ritual thing — barely a proper ritual, won't set off the wards. Exactly when and how varies family to family, the Blacks first do it at three, with more iterations at seven, thirteen — around the start of puberty, traditionally, but shifted to the thirteenth birthday to make things simpler — and on the eve of their wedding...and women have an extra one, actually, whenever they learn they're pregnant with their first child, it's a whole thing. But, we're big into high magic, so I'm certain we do it way more than most people. Gin actually knew what it was without me having to explain, which is weird, I assumed the Weasleys didn't do anything? Being proper, civilised light mages."

Gin shrugged. Her own arms now empty of candles, she stuck her hands in her pockets, looking strangely awkward. "Grandma Lucretia led mine, with Bill and Charlie."

"Lucretia, you mean Lucretia Prewett _née_ Black?"

Lyra must have that right, because Gin just nodded — which was _weird_, they'd been living together for months and Hermione had somehow never learned Lyra and Gin were cousins...but then, most purebloods were, when it came down to it. "Did one when I was seven, and another over the summer, which was probably supposed to be the thirteen one. Bill said not to tell our parents, they wouldn't approve."

"But, if Lucy was doing it with you, she must have done them for Molly when she was a kid too. And Arthur, now that I think about it — wasn't _his_ mother a Black too? Cedrella Lycoris, wasn't it, Castor and Nora's?"

"I think so. I don't know, Bill told me not to tell them, so." Gin shrugged.

"Wait, _both_ of your grandmothers were Blacks?"

Lyra turned her brilliant grin back on Hermione. "Oh, sure — Cedrella and Lucretia are second cousins. I'm Gin's third cousin through Cedrella, and fourth through Lucretia. She's even more closely related to Sirius, Lucretia is his father's sister." Meaning they were...first/second cousins once removed? Hermione wasn't sure, she'd never had to keep track of these things before. Sirius's grandfather was Gin's great-grandfather, was what Lyra was saying, and _that_ was news, Hermione'd had no idea...

Rolling her eyes, Gin drawled, "Mum likes to pretend she isn't related to the Blacks at all. I honestly didn't even know Sirius was her first cousin until he told me a few days ago."

"I'm sure Lucy loves that."

"Oh, she hates it, there are reasons we don't see the Prewetts much."

Right, they'd probably keep going off on a meandering tangent about their interrelated families if Hermione didn't drag them back on track — purebloods had an awful habit of doing that. "Okay, what _is_ it, then, this ritual thing?"

"Just saying hello," Lyra said, simply and casually, as though that explained everything.

Before Hermione could say that was _not_ a real answer, Gin provided one. If not a very clear one. "Basically, the idea is to call forth Magic to...well. It's hard to put it into words, exactly. It's called an introduction for a reason — just, Magic comes in to touch you for a bit. Like, wild magic, the magic of the world. I'm not explaining this very well."

"Okay." If Hermione understood correctly — which, she might not, she didn't have any experience with this sort of thing — the ritual basically just opened a connection between the subject and the Powers. Not with the intent of _doing_ anything with it, just...well, _saying hello_. (As much as Lyra's 'explanations' might not be very helpful in the moment, they usually made perfect sense once Hermione actually knew what she was talking about.) It did sound kind of interesting, she guessed — an absolute beginner's introduction to ritual magic, basically. Even if the thought of playing around with high magic was sort of intimidating. "And it won't... I mean, it's not _dangerous_, is it?"

"Oh, no," Gin said, an odd, unreadable look crossing her face. "It's sort of... Well, it feels really good, actually. A bit _confusing_, but..."

Lyra shrugged. "Contact euphoria is a thing. It's a problem some ritualists run into, they can get addicted to it if they're not careful. So, no, it's not dangerous — Magic _wants_ you to like it, it's not going to hurt you for no reason."

Hermione never quite knew what to think when Lyra talked about Magic like...almost like it was a _person_, with a will and preferences of its own. Though, it..._kind of_ was? It was somewhat more complicated than that, as she understood. According to the theory books on the subject she'd been reading lately, magic was affected by the presence of living things, an echo of their feelings and thoughts carrying into it — Magic had, sort of, taken on some of the traits of living things, just on contact, including consciousness..._theoretically_. Not the same _kind_ of consciousness people had, of course, but not so alien as to be completely unrecognisable as a self-aware _something_.

Exactly what that consciousness looked like, well, there was a lot of disagreement on that. For all intents and purposes, Magic had _hundreds_ of more or less independent minds — the various gods and things, like Lyra's Eris — but there was also the underlying Magic of the universe, which theoretically had its own more diffuse, less colourful personality. What _that_ Magic was like was far more open to debate. Most scholars agreed it was benevolent, if in a distant, impersonal sort of way. Which wasn't a surprise when Hermione thought about it — if its awareness was a reflection of all the life in the universe, one if its underriding impulses would naturally be to work towards the continued flourishing of life (in reflection of the reproductive drive, see), so it only made sense Magic would default to...well, benevolent but impersonal, that really was the best way to put it.

_That_ Magic, she thought, the incomprehensibly ancient and enormous _something_ at the centre of the universe, was what this ritual was supposed to open her up to. Which was a rather intimidating thought, but not a _bad_ one, exactly.

She had been wondering about ritual magic a bit lately, after all. This was a good a way to get her first experience with it as any. "Right. So what do I do then?"

"You don't have to do much of anything, just sit— Oh," Lyra cut herself off, frowning. "Almost forgot, take your bra off first."

"Excuse me?"

"With the kind of power you'll be in contact with, metal can do some funny things, especially when in contact with other materials. Like cloth or skin, for example. Unless you _want_ your clothes to catch fire, I guess, then go ahead and keep it."

Hermione huffed. "No, I _don't_ want to be set on fire, thank you." She whipped off her robe, setting it to hang off the back of her chair. It was somewhat awkward getting at the clasps without taking her shirt off — and uncomfortable, with Lyra and Gin standing right there watching her — but she got it after a couple seconds trying. "How did you almost forget _that_?"

One shoulder lifting in a shrug, Lyra said, "Honestly, I forget bras exist half the time. They're a muggle thing, and a comparatively new one at that."

"I never even saw one before coming to Hogwarts," Gin added.

That..._was_ a good point — now that Hermione thought about it, the modern bra was largely a post-war thing, they would barely have been around for a couple decades in Lyra's original time. And mages tended to be a good century behind on most trends, if they caught up at all, so it wasn't surprising they'd be new to Gin too. They were just so ubiquitous on the muggle side, it hadn't occurred to her. "Er, corsets and things would be a problem too though, right?" Not that most of them bothered with anything like that most days, and when they did it seemed to be just for fashion — Hermione had noticed that purebloods tended to be late bloomers, very few of the other girls in their year had much in the way of noticeable breasts at all.

(Hermione had tried to not be self-conscious about it back in second year, and mostly failed.)

"Muggles put metal in corsets? Huh." Lyra silently frowned for a second. "How would that even... Never mind, _ours_ wouldn't be a problem. Unless they used metal for decoration, I guess, but that would be a weirdly fancy thing to be wearing doing a ritual. Actually, this sort of thing is _supposed_ to be done in the nude, if we're going to be all traditional about it — that's the original reason why introduction rituals in particular are normally done by single-sex groups, Gin's much older brothers being in on hers is _very_ unusual — but they eventually figured out it was only certain materials that were causing problems, so that was phased out over time."

Thank God for small favours, she guessed. "Is that why all the buttons and clasps used in clothing made by mages are made of ceramic or silver alloys?" She was wearing a magic-made skirt right now that had a couple buttons on it that she thought were ceramic, or maybe carved from an animal shell of some kind, hard to tell.

Lyra gave her an odd look. "House elves."

Oh, right, she'd forgotten about that — much like certain magical beings, like werewolves, had a sensitivity to silver, most elves and fae and such were sensitive to certain lighter metals. Iron, cobalt, and nickel were the primary offenders...though not copper, for some reason, which didn't quite make _scientific_ sense, but magic things didn't always. It was interesting that the problem metals, pure and alloyed, were all ferromagnetic, but while the big three all were in their pure form, copper only was in alloys — maybe that made the difference somehow.

It was _also_ interesting that they were sensitive to materials that every living thing on earth needed to survive — iron was obvious, but there was cobalt at the centre of vitamin B12, which was absolutely essential for all mammals, at the very least. Though, when she thought about it, iron and cobalt should always be bound at the core of complex organic compounds, and shouldn't be directly reactive at any point in the relevant metabolic processes — in the bacteria that synthesised them, perhaps, but not in complex mammals — so maybe it didn't really...

And she was letting her thoughts wander again. "Right, what do I do?"

Grinning like a maniac again, Lyra pointed at the circle of candles. "Just sit in the middle of the circle. You don't have to do anything other than wait — you're the subject of the ritual, not a participant."

Right, she knew that. Okay then. Trying to ignore the nerves setting her arms to tingling, Hermione stepped into the middle of the circle. Getting down to the floor was slightly awkward, with the skirt and all, but at least it was long and loose enough for her to fold her legs without any issue. Lyra and Gin muttered to each other for a moment, before they came to sit on the floor too, directly across the circle from each other, Lyra to her left and Gin to her right. They were silent for a brief moment, probably concentrating.

Whatever they were doing, Hermione felt _something_ already, but it had nothing to do with the ritual. Ever since Lyra had gone on a rant about focusing exercises and magic sensing and such halfway through third year, Hermione had done some reading on the subject, and started integrating focusing exercises into her occlumency practice, which she'd already been doing by that point. It had made her spellcasting tighter than it'd been before — though the difference was small enough she might not have noticed at all if Professor Flitwick hadn't commented on it — but the big thing was she could actually _feel_ magic now, as more than just the slight sense of static on the air she'd always had. (That might not even count, since muggles could feel it too, according to both her parents.)

She'd been surprised to learn, these first couple weeks back at school, that this magic-sensing stuff was how divination was actually _supposed_ to work, Trelawney had just been terrible and had no idea how to teach it. To Hermione's own shock, she was near the top of their Divination class — alongside, of all people, Harry, Neville, and Susan — which was just _weird_. That first exercise they'd been given, drawing from a deck of playing cards (most mages still used tarot cards for their original purpose) and trying to guess the suit of the card their partner was holding? Hermione and Neville both had a success rate of _over two-thirds_, which was, just, statistically improbable. Especially since, if Hermione was doing it on her own, guessing the suit of the top card and flipping it over, her success rate plummeted right back down to the expected one in four — it only worked if someone else was looking at the card, which was _weird_.

Though, when Hermione had told Lyra it was weird, she'd insisted that should have been bloody obvious. One couldn't divine knowledge if that knowledge _didn't exist_ — whatever Hermione was subconsciously picking up on wasn't the card itself, but _Neville's knowledge of_ the card, an echo of it carrying through the magic around them. Seers and such didn't sense echoes of the events themselves, but _people's experiences of_ events. There _were_ Seers that could do what Hermione had attempted, flipping over cards on her own, but what they'd actually be picking up on would be their _own experience_ of later _viewing_ the card, not the card itself independent of anyone observing it. Which was strange and circular...but also made an obvious kind of sense, when she thought about it. After all, magic reacted to people's thoughts and feelings, and it was that _reaction_ they were feeling, obviously.

Hermione was already glad she'd decided to stick with Divination, once she'd learned they'd have a new professor, even if she still didn't think the class would be particularly useful. The _useful_ divinations — feeling out if someone was telling the truth or not, sensing danger, finding their way if lost — were actually being taught in Defence this year, Divination was really just an interesting curiosity at this point.

But anyway, it hadn't taken very long playing with magic sensing before she'd been able to feel Lyra's...well, "aura" was the word people typically used, no matter how silly Hermione felt saying it. At first, just when she'd closed her eyes and took a moment to focus on it, but now practically all the time — _especially_ when Lyra wasn't doing a good job holding it in, her magic just leaked _everywhere_ sometimes. It had taken a while for Hermione to put exactly what she was feeling, what the energy radiating from Lyra actually was, to put it into the proper terms and context, because it didn't really...

She meant, over her first couple years learning about magic she'd been given a rather...superficial understanding of certain things. The distinction between light and dark magic, for example, she'd been given the impression the beneficial magics were light, and destructive magics were dark. She knew now that was a _massive_ oversimplification — Professor Lovegood and Miss Stacey were quite insistent that anyone could use light or dark magic to whatever end they wished, helpful or harmful — but it had led to some confusion regarding the feel of Lyra's magic. She would expect dark magic to feel, well, _bad_, unpleasant or painful or sickening or _something_, but it _didn't,_ not really. In her visits to Ancient House, she'd bumbled across a few enchantments that were _definitely_ harmful, and _those_ felt unpleasant, like a cold, sharp knife pressed against her neck, but dark magic _in general_...

If she were to compare the feel of Lyra's magic to anything, it was the wind, like a cool breeze in summer, wild and playful, tugging at her hair. It did get rather sharper at times, sometimes stinging so harsh it was painful, but that was in response to Lyra's _mood_, not the density of the magic itself — like Lyra's anger turned the refreshing summer breeze into a biting winter wind. It had taken several weeks for Hermione to even realise what she was feeling was _very dark_ magic, it just felt too...

Okay, it felt like a _very_ strange thing to say, almost embarrassing, given she was talking about her girlfriend's magic, but it was rather pleasant, actually. She didn't know if that was because she'd unconsciously associated it with Lyra, or if it was just because Hermione had an affinity for dark magic herself — according to Professor Lovegood, anyway, Hermione hadn't had any idea — or, hell, if the things people said about dark magic weren't just _wildly_ inaccurate.

Learning about the Powers and such, it'd become increasingly obvious that the so-called "Dark" was absolutely necessary — without Wisdom, without Freedom(/"Chaos"), yes, even without Destruction or Death, society would horrifically stagnate. Some people might not like to contemplate the "Dark" aspects of existence, but that didn't mean they weren't essential to existence itself.

Over the brief moment Lyra and Gin were silent and unmoving, the cool, playful dance of Lyra's magic grew more intense, powerful enough Hermione almost thought her hair should be fluttering in the wind, yes, that was expected. But, for the first time without having to intentionally seek it out, Hermione could feel Gin's magic as well. It was obviously different than Lyra's, but not particularly offensive either — it was a firm, steady heat, rather putting Hermione in mind of a campfire, a solid wall of light and warmth, without the giddy, wild energy of Lyra's, but no less pleasant in its own way.

She wouldn't want to actually _touch_ it...but then, she wouldn't stick her hand in a campfire either, would she?

Eventually, Hermione hadn't been counting the seconds — and her thoughts had been free to idle for a good while, so it must have been a minute or two — their simple little ritual actually started. The aura of twisting, teasing dark magic around Lyra focused for a moment, lashed out in a sharp _snap_, the candle directly behind Hermione coming alight. (She couldn't _see_ it, of course, but she felt the magic taking anyway.) Around the same moment, Lyra said Hermione's name, first middle and last. Then, with another _snap_ of magic, clearly light this time, the candle directly in front of Hermione was lit, Gin repeating her name. Gin's candle-lighting charm was far tighter, without the wild wisps of giggling energy Lyra had flung in all directions, she was using her wand to focus the magic better. Lyra lit another candle with another messy freeform charm — Hermione reminded herself to remind Lyra to go back to her focusing exercises, that was just inefficient — this time casually muttering, "We invite Magic to our circle." Gin did the same, her repetition of the phrase sounding somewhat more absent — she had to focus harder to light the candles properly, Hermione guessed, not used to casting magic silently. They went around, back and forth, alternating between saying her name and that one little phrase with each candle they lit, working their way around the circle clockwise.

Or, deasil, she guessed — _sunways_, not clockwise. Mages preferred the older terms for these sorts of things, especially when talking about potions and ritual.

For most of the candle-lighting process, the only magic Hermione felt on the air was Lyra and Gin's, the tiny fires on the candles, sparks of dark and light so weak she could barely feel them. But, there was something else here. It built slowly, at the edge of her awareness, subtle enough Hermione must not have noticed at first. Other magic she'd encountered before had always felt localised, heat radiating out from a single source, had a direction and a motion to it, but this was different. It wasn't coming or going, it simply _was_ — less like a sound crossing a room and more like a scent that had long ago filled it, an undifferentiated, uniform presence. And it was...

It smelled like grass and tasted of copper, the electric anticipation of an approaching thunderstorm — as it got thicker and thicker Hermione could think her gums might be bleeding, her hair should be standing up — heat coursing through her blood in a sudden thrill, she couldn't quite hold in a shiver. And it grew and grew, thick enough it was sort of surprising she couldn't see it, that she could even still _breathe_, but it wasn't just big, it was also _deep_, connected to something stretching far beyond the little circle of candles, right against her skin and deepening further and further, and...

It was, she thought, rather like the magical equivalent of walking right up to the edge of a cliff — despite the fact that she was sitting on the floor, she felt like she were teetering on the edge of an endless abyss, one that was _awake_, looking right at her, whispering at her to _jump_. It was unexpectedly exhilarating — it wasn't like Magic would _hurt_ her, after all, she wasn't in any real danger — but it was also terrifying, enough she had to resist the urge to pop up and out of the circle.

But she didn't have to jump. The abyss reached up and pulled her down into it without her having to do a thing.

When Harry asked her about it later (apparently no one had told Sirius yet that _he_ wouldn't have been properly introduced to Magic _either_), she wouldn't be able to explain exactly what it had felt like. It had been _too much_, washed away in an overwhelming wave of magic and feeling and memory, lost in a dancing maelstrom of light and colour she couldn't contain, flashes of experiences that were not her own. She only even remembered a little bit.

—remained at a distance, the wind shocked into existence as the shells burst tearing at her hair, the wards shining orange and white under the assault, holding but cracking, spellfire green and black lancing out to press—

—children cheered as they returned, running out to meet them, a few nearly getting themselves trampled under hoof in their excitement, she jumped down to meet her boy, sweeping him up and—

—glaring at the clinic's smooth ceiling, _quite_ tired with the nurse's attitude, the litany of questioning equal parts irritating and humiliating, she'd known _exactly_ what she was doing, coming here seeking an abortion, they wouldn't guilt her out of—

—ducked as the dragon made another pass at the ramparts, fire splashing against the palings Sylvi had erected over their heads, the stars temporarily obscured with flickering blue and orange, a few dribbles managed to punch through, she scrambled to banish the magical flame away, cursing under her breath—

—standing helplessly among her trunk and bags, ignoring the lady babbling away at her, she glared through the open door of the childrens' home at her father's retreating back, and for the first time in her life, fire crawling hard and hot in her chest, she truly _hated_, she—

—caught in her throat, she stared out the viewport, millions of stars in a dozen subtly different colours, a number and clarity she'd never before seen, the curve of the planet to her left, oceans gleaming blue, clouds afire with a distance sunset, city lights in blobs and tiny lines disappearing over the—

—Hermione giggled at the magic dancing through her veins, sparks shooting behind her eyes in a flickering rainbow of colour. It was already pulling back, she could tell — though how long it had carried her away for she couldn't tell, it'd felt like hours yet also only seconds — the few last tendrils of power touching her still enough she could barely move, barely think, lost in a sea of gentle warmth, gently tickling energy. It was still watching her, she could tell — not from the outside, but the _inside_, what she was thinking and feeling, not in a single moment but _everything_, combing through her memories behind her and the tangled threads of potential futures ahead of her quicker than she could comprehend.

And she could feel it _feeling_, turning her mind in its fingers, carefully, like a pretty but fragile bauble. No, that wasn't right — there was a bit of more distant fascination, like Hermione would feel over some academic curiosity, but it wasn't only that. There was something warmer, a kind of tolerant amusement. Like a parent looking on the silly antics of a small child, love and exasperation and pride and anticipation and—

It cut off, abruptly, leaving Hermione lying on her back in the middle of the circle of candles, breathlessly giggling.

While she was still trying to get her breath, her skin still pleasantly tingling with the last lingering traces of Magic's presence, she felt more than saw Lyra lean over her, magic wild and sharp and playful. "Er, Maïa, you okay? If Magic broke you, I'm going to be very annoyed at it."

"I'm fine," she managed to choke out — Lyra saying something so _silly_ like that, being _annoyed_ at the _universe_ for _breaking her_, really didn't help the giggling situation. (Seriously, her throat was starting to hurt, she had to stop going that.) At least, she was pretty sure she was fine. That _had_ been a lot, but it hadn't accidentally incinerated her body or anything, and her mind was clearly still working (presumably). If anything, she felt...

Well, she felt _great_, actually. Warm, and tingly, and, and _awake_, more energised than she thought she'd ever been ever, like she could do anything she liked, and excited, and, it was just _amazing_.

She clearly had to look into ritual magic more. The thought had occurred to her, before, that it sounded interesting, but it'd also sounded slightly terrifying. At the moment, though, it didn't seem quite so bad. She was aware she probably wasn't thinking straight right now, probably had a bit of a magic high (which she knew was a thing, even if she'd never experienced it herself), but magic was _awesome_, and it was fun, and it clearly liked her, and Hermione was brilliant, so she'd be fine.

(She realised that was a rather arrogant thought, but at the moment it seemed perfectly reasonable. She _was_ brilliant, Magic _did_ like her, _so there_.)

But she had absolutely no idea how to explain that to Lyra, that everything was _great_, and she wasn't losing her mind or anything.

So she blindly reached for her to pull her down and kiss her instead.

Hermione would admit she'd had absolutely no idea what she was doing when it came to this kissing thing, at first. She'd been distracted by the thought here and there — once or twice in second year with Lockhart, which was _extremely_ embarrassing in retrospect, and then with Lyra in third year, increasingly over the winter until it was annoyingly persistent — but she'd never actually _done_ it before this summer, not in any context she'd had real control over. Her first kiss ever had been Lyra, just, out and doing it, _right in front of her parents_, with no warning at all, because she was a crazy person, and after that was just the Walpurgis Revel, which...

Honestly, that was _still_ embarrassing, looking back on it. She'd kind of just...walked around randomly kissing people...for practice. Because, clearly, before doing anything in any context where it actually mattered, one should get a bit of practice in first. Since Lyra had been Eris at the time and not really available, and the thought of kissing Lyra had still been a bit intimidating in the first place — not _just_ because she wasn't certain whether she wanted to go there, she'd also been worried she'd be terrible at it, that she'd ruin everything — her Walpurgis-addled brain had thought wandering around randomly kissing people was the perfectly reasonable thing to do. She'd still been _herself_ enough to stay away from anything too..._involved_, but it was still, just, _mortifying_, to recall how she'd behaved that night. And because Eris liked to bloody mess with people for fun, she _remembered every second of it_.

(Luckily, none of the other students she'd done her practice kissing with remembered, or at least hadn't given any hint they did. That would have been, just, _awkward_.)

The first time she thought actually _counted_ was that day Lyra had randomly shown up in France — stepping out of the shadows in her bedroom at her grandmother's house, with no warning at all, because Lyra. They'd been sitting in a nearby park, talking about the _book Lyra had written_, and Lyra had revealed she'd written it _for her_, and... Well, she hadn't really thought about it, to be honest. She'd just..._done_ it. And then done it some more. They'd gone on snogging for some minutes, actually, just, sitting there out in public. It'd seemed the thing to do.

That was hardly the last time they'd done it. A bit of snogging here and there was just expected for teenagers, wasn't it, of course they had. Sort of a lot, actually. Especially since they'd gotten back to Hogwarts, and so saw each other every day.

It's not like they were going at it _constantly_ or anything, but when the thought _did_ occur to her... Well, why not? Lyra was always around, and she was brilliant and fascinating (even if she got slightly terrifying sometimes) and _annoyingly_ pretty, and she clearly didn't mind, so.

(Hermione was in _so_ much trouble.)

But, for all the practice she'd gotten at this snogging thing by now, she still didn't feel like she really knew what she was doing. She was just too self-conscious, she guessed. She'd never been particularly confident when it came to any sort of physical activity at all — apparently, that same awkwardness of hers when they'd been forced into sport things back in primary translated directly to snogging, which was _very_ irritating. She couldn't help thinking about things too hard, if she was doing something wrong, or, she didn't know...

It didn't help that...it was just kind of embarrassing sometimes. And Lyra seemed to enjoy embarrassing her. Well, no, it wasn't the embarrassment itself that Lyra was going for, she didn't think, it was the things that _caused_ it. She would do things, like, surprise her with teeth, either catching her lip or on her neck, and she never quite managed to hold in a _completely_ embarrassing squeak, which Lyra apparently thought was _adorable_ (she'd actually said as much), so she _kept doing it_, and...

Hermione _could_ tell her to stop, and she probably would listen, but she didn't really want her to. And that was embarrassing all by itself.

But it wasn't just surprising her that was the problem sometimes, no, sometimes when they'd been at it a little while, and Lyra was all being right there, and sometimes her fingers would slip under the hem of her shirt, and sometimes she'd be kissing her neck and...

Sometimes Hermione got a bit..._aroused_, was the word. A bit. And that was embarrassing all by itself.

Which was _silly_, she knew it was silly, it was perfectly natural and _expected_, even, and nothing to be feeling _embarrassed_ about. But it just happened, she couldn't help it.

The self-consciousness and occasional embarrassment was just a normal part of the snogging thing, the bad she had to take with the good, and she'd learned to accept by now that it's just what it was like for her.

Except this time, apparently.

Maybe it was the magic high still messing with her head? Because, this time, she hardly even noticed. She just _did_ it.

She _yanked_ Lyra down by the collar of her shirt — _Hermione's_ shirt, technically, Lyra had stolen her pyjamas again — hard enough Lyra had to scramble to stop herself slamming into her, her palm hitting the wood of the floor a bit away from Hermione's head with a loud slapping noise. Lyra let out a grunt of surprise, and was maybe about to say something, but Hermione's lips were sort of already in the way.

And she didn't think about it. She just _did_ it.

After a little bit, Lyra shifted, settling her weight over her, and Hermione's breath hitched when Lyra caught her lip with her teeth again (she kept _doing_ that), and Lyra took the opportunity of her momentary distraction to go for her neck, because of _course_ she did, smooth black hair falling over her face, smelling vaguely of apples and hazelnuts. The tingles from the magic that had just been finally fading away were replaced with another kind of tingle entirely, soft lips alternating with sharper nips setting her skin to crawling, she clamped down on her throat, keeping the pressure building in her chest mostly bottled in, her hands fisting in Lyra's shirt and her hair.

No, that was nice, but Hermione needed to be kissing her now — she pulled at her hair a bit, not _hard_, but enough to draw Lyra away from her neck and up to her face again. (At least, she didn't _think_ it was too hard, Lyra just laughed under her breath a little so it was probably fine.) Hermione pulled her closer, and pushed deeper, she could barely breathe but she wanted _more_, and—

A shocked _eep_ escaped her throat — a little muffled, since she didn't have her mouth to herself at the moment — as she felt cold fingers slip up her side, pushing the hem of her shirt up to her ribs. Her heartbeat throbbing in her throat and her lips and her fingertips, Hermione shivered, Lyra breaking an inch away with a bright giggle. She shivered again, her feet shifting against the floor, when Lyra tipped up to her ear to whisper, "You make such _adorable_ noises, you know," before attacking her neck again.

Hermione laughed.

She cut off almost right away, clamping down on her throat again (with an odd, strangled noise she barely heard), grabbing at Lyra, the one hand tightening in her hair a bit, the other had apparently gotten under Lyra's shirt at some point, clutching at her back (_very_ warm and smooth and _distracting_). Lyra was going rather harder on her neck this time, biting and sucking (actually slipped and made a funny noise at one point), and it hurt, but it was also _wonderful_, Hermione's head was going fuzzy, heat stabbing down low under her stomach, and she had to _move_, she didn't really think about it, their legs had tangled together at some point, and she felt herself shifting, she needed to move, and she felt the moan drawn out of her throat before she heard it, her chest felt too full she couldn't hold it in anymore and—

Something hard slammed into her side, Lyra tumbled off of her, the force rolled Hermione all the way over once, ending up on her back as she'd started. Hermione was too dazed to do anything for a moment, too distractingly warm and tingly and lightheaded.

"What the hell was _that_ for, Weasley?" That was Lyra's voice, sounding a little more slurred than usual. It took Hermione a second to realise who she was talking to.

Gin. They were on the floor, in their dorm room. And Gin had been _right there the whole time_.

Her heart jumping up into her throat (for a _very_ different reason than it had a moment ago), Hermione pushed herself upright — which was surprisingly difficult, her arms feeling all too weak and shaky. She noticed immediately her skirt was bunched up over her waist, she smoothed it back down over her thighs, her face going uncomfortably warm (for a _very_ different reason than it had a moment ago).

Gin was standing toward her side of the room, past the scattered former circle of candles, her wand hand shaking at her hip, her face _very_ red, clashing with her bright orangish hair. "If you two wanna snog wherever, I don't care, but you were— If you're going to shag, do it in one of your beds behind privacy charms, okay? That's _literally_ all I ask!"

Somehow flushing even hotter than she'd been a second ago, Hermione let out a groan, covering her face with both hands. _Trying_ to ignore the shiver running up her spine and the tingling heat down— She wasn't doing very well, it was _very hard to ignore_.

And her neck still kind of hurt, a low, warm, steady ache...that was _also_ very distracting, god damn it.

She'd like to say she would have had the presence of mind to not, just, get carried away on the hardwood floor out in the open in their bloody dorm room — it wasn't like she'd _ever_...gotten carried away with Lyra before (yet) — but she was clearly _not_ in her right mind at the moment. It was the magic high's fault, she was blaming the ritual. Yes.

(Conveniently ignoring that she was pretty sure the magic high had worn off already — it was the magic's fault, yes, obviously.)

"Don't go ruining other people's fun just 'cause you're feeling neglected. Not cool, Gin."

"I _will_ use a light hex next time, see if I don't."

"Ugh, fine. Probably wouldn't have even happened if not for the magic high, anyway. Maïa's shy, you know."

For a second, Hermione was almost surprised that the only problem _Lyra_ had with them doing, whatever, on the floor, right in front of Gin, was that _Hermione was shy_, what, would _Lyra_ not have a problem with that? But then she realised, no, obviously Lyra wouldn't care — she doubted Lyra would blink at the thought of stripping down and shagging each other silly on the Gryffindor table in the Great Hall until they passed out from exhaustion, right in front of the whole school.

Hermione broke into mad giggles as she got a mental image of that exact scenario, stopped herself in private mortification.

(Once again, she thanked god Lyra wasn't a legilimens.)

When she could finally uncover her face again — it still felt _very_ warm, but she felt she could actually look at Lyra or Gin now without wanting to curl into a ball and disappear — Gin had put her wand away again, slinking over to her desk and muttering under her breath. A glance the other way, and there was Lyra, just out of arm's reach. Her hair was rather disheveled, her shirt a bit crooked, her face and the arc of her chest visible between the straps of her top rather pinker than usual, lips slightly puffy. The glare she'd been fixing on Gin vanished as she turned to Hermione, her face stealing over with the familiar bright grin, her charmed purple eyes almost seeming to sparkle. "I take it you like high magic."

The laugh burst out of her before she could even think to stop it. "Ah, yeah, that was... Nice, it was nice." Hermione almost said something about the bit _after_ the ritual being nice too, but apparently her ability to be embarrassed about these things was well and truly back — she glanced away, resisting the urge to yank the hem of her skirt further down her thighs.

(Right now, it was very hard to think about how, just a minute ago, they— Hermione had literally been _rubbing herself against Lyra_ when Gin had hexed them apart, oh god, she could just _die_...)

Lyra apparently didn't have a good response for that, but Hermione could see the knowing smirk in her peripheral vision, so she could make a pretty good guess what she was thinking anyway.

Once Hermione had herself mostly together again — her legs felt even shakier than her arms, she hadn't trusted her ability to walk properly — she grabbed a change of clothes and slunk off for the bathroom. She did still need to take a shower tonight anyway, but she was still feeling a bit...distracted, and she suspected if she didn't take a moment alone she'd have trouble getting to sleep tonight.

Of course, she'd been having trouble with getting too _distracted_ to sleep easily quite often, since coming back to Hogwarts. She was sharing a bedroom with her girlfriend, okay, so she was always _right there_, it was distracting, was all.

She was in _so_ much trouble...


	14. Theodore I am a bird

Theo was scared.

Terrified, really, but excited, too. This was probably the most important day of his life. After this, he would be _different_, he knew, no longer as human as he had been all his life. He and Luna had talked about it, the concept of dedicating oneself to Magic, or some smaller, more defined part of it — mostly in the oddly unstable there-and-not Room of Requirement, because Luna tried to avoid the gaze of her Patron whenever she was seriously discussing leaving Her. It had taken him months (_years_, really) to find the Aspect he wanted to serve. It wasn't until he and Luna had begun talking, in fact, that he'd decided for certain that he _wanted_ to serve a specific Aspect, rather than simply throwing himself into the hands of Fate and allowing Magic to choose, or else let him serve all of it, Mystery.

Luna had told him what her mother had told _her_ about Mystery — which might or might not be terribly accurate, given her apparent tendency to _simplify_ things for her young daughter (Luna was still upset about that, her aunt confirming that her mother had _lied_ to her) — but even Theo had to admit that trying to become someone, some_thing_, which could comprehend all that which a human mind _could not_ was...daunting. There was a _reason_ that Mystery and Madness were so closely aligned. And, though Theo had long since come to terms with the idea of being _thought_ mad, he _really_ hadn't come to terms with the idea of potentially _going_ mad — in an _actually losing his mind_ sort of way, rather than just a _more and less than human_ sort of way.

Limiting the power he dared to reach for was safer, even if it did mean that he was sort of applying to serve a particular entity which might or might not want him. He _thought_ he'd chosen one he was more or less suited to serve — Thōth, from the Egyptian pantheon, a god of both magic and knowledge — but he was nearly _petrified_ at the thought of _what if he doesn't like me?_

Before talking to Luna about her own situation, he hadn't even known it was _possible_ for a mage to dedicate themselves (or _be_ dedicated) to a Power they were unsuited to serve and, at this moment, he was acutely aware that he was about to enter into a compact which could not be broken without consequences, and likely _severe_ consequences at that, without ever having _met_ the god he was dedicating the rest of his life to. Like getting married to a stranger. (Likely a very _strange_ stranger.)

And yet... He knew this was right. He might be a bit _uncertain_ about the details — more so now than he had been when they'd decided that they were going to do it, and they were going to do it _today_ — but he _knew_ he belonged to Magic. This was the only thing he could possibly imagine doing with his life, it was just... It was a big step.

_Anyone_ would be scared.

He was doing a pretty good job of pretending he wasn't, his steps even as he led the way out onto the grounds — they couldn't do this in the school, the wards would tell the professors — the charms he'd set to deflect attention from the two of them holding steady...

But Luna could tell. His fear and excitement echoed her own, nearly overwhelming, coming from every direction at once. She thought she might be ill, in fact, just from drowning in the moment and everything it meant. She focused as hard as she could on simply putting one foot in front of the other, following the swaying navy of Theo's robes as he picked his way out into the woods, the not-so-forbidden part of the Forest, but it was no good. She had to stop.

She leaned against a tree, eyes closed, head tilted back — bark rough under her palms, snagging her hair, solid realness at her back, bringing her back to a world that wasn't endless waves of emotion, buffeting her around on an open sea — letting the quiet of the Wild sink into her as Theo continued on, giving her some room to breathe. To ground and centre herself.

They were alone out here, mostly, the centaurs and wilderfolk and dryads and unicorns present, but distant, and less prone to wave-making anyway. She breathed deep, taking in the scent of the earth and the changing leaves, just beginning to fall, the _freshness_ of it. After a moment— Or at least, she didn't _think_ it had been very long, Theo hadn't gotten that far away. Even if she couldn't feel him, she would know by his crunching and the sweep of leaves against cloth — he wasn't a part of this place, not really. She wasn't either, for all she might want to be, sometimes. When she wasn't here, mostly. The quiet was soothing, but cold and lonely and _big_, even when there were thestrals to keep her company. It reminded her of Aunt Cassie, even though this wasn't _really_ the Wild, quite. More the safe in-between _almost_ wild. A civilised sort of wild, if such a thing could exist. (A liminal place, the edge of the world — or at least the human one.)

And it reminded her of Eris, and telling Lyra Bellatrix that they couldn't be friends anymore, and how much it had hurt, watching her fly away, and how she had _hated_ Gelach, in that moment. Just a brief flash of anger, and then guilt and fear, and so much sadness at the unfairness and the weighing-down-ness of it all.

_No, don't think about that_.

She took another deep breath, focusing on the life all around her, in the trees and the animals — squirrels and birds and deer just waking for the evening — and even the bugs and worms in the dirt beneath her feet, going about their business without even the slightest care for her presence, eating and breeding and readying themselves for winter, as their natures dictated.

She _could_. She _could_ think about that, if she wanted to. She didn't _have_ to try to be the quiet, distant thing the Moon wanted of her, not if she didn't want to. She didn't have to deny the person she had grown into. She was _human_, after all. A mortal, living thing, with a nature of her own as surely as the tree at her back. To grow, to change, to age and die. To allow herself to be shaped by her experiences. She didn't have to pretend they never happened and she was still seven years old or they meant nothing and she was a statue, or a painting of a girl — _ceci n'est pas une vie_.

She had a _choice_.

She had _made_ a choice.

That was why she was _here_.

Theo's shudder of concern reached her only a moment before his voice. "Luna? Are you okay?"

፠

A stick caught, somehow, between Theo's feet, flipping around and tangling in his robes. He tripped, stumbled, cursed under his breath. The clearing they'd decided to use for their dedications — well, Theo's dedication, and Luna's _re_-dedication — was only a little bit further (he thought), which was good, because while there were _many_ things that Theo was good at, a few areas he even excelled in, _being outdoors_ wasn't one of them.

His _first _idea of a place to do this had been at home, in the library. Thōth was, among other things, the god who had brought written language to the Ancient Egyptians, so it had only seemed right to do the ritual surrounded by books. But it really hadn't taken long for him to realise that he didn't feel comfortable in his own home, still, even though That Bastard was well and thoroughly dead now, thanks to Lyra. (It was still weird to think that he _never had to see him again_ — walking through the house, he kept expecting to run into him around any given corner.)

His next choice had been the library at Ancient House, surrounded by more books than he would ever be able to read, spilling out of the library proper into the nearby bedrooms. But that didn't feel right, either.

They weren't _his_ books, for one thing.

And more importantly, as little as Lyra might mind his presence in her home, he was acutely aware, every time he set foot in it, that the wards and the shattered magics of the House were _watching _him. He didn't _belong_ there. Granted, he didn't much think he belonged out _here_, either — he wasn't sure he knew _anyone_ less _outdoors-y_ than himself — but at least he didn't feel like there was some barely-restrained creature right behind him, just _waiting_ for him to put a toe out of line, give it permission to strike. It hadn't stopped him going over there to read and borrow books, of course, but he _did_ have to remind himself pretty much constantly that it was _probably_ all in his head. Probably. Given that he didn't actually _believe_ that it was all in his head, he wasn't about to start doing black rituals unsupervised in the library and give it an excuse to rip his heart out or something.

And obviously the Hogwarts Library was right out. Theo hadn't believed Snape for a second when he'd told all the little firsties that the wards would _prevent_ Black Arts rituals from taking effect, but he _did_ believe that they would summon every adult in the Castle to deal with a potential existential threat, _and_ treat him like a hostile invader the second anything too dark and too powerful answered his call and entered their bounds — which was what Snape had told him they would do when little Theo finally got over his wariness of his intimidating Head of House enough to go to one of his office hours and ask how the impossible wards supposedly worked. Which actually meant anywhere in the school was out.

But then Luna had decided that she definitely did want to rededicate herself to Truth, and they'd kind of mutually agreed that it would be less terrifying, or at least they'd be more likely to follow through with it, if they did it together. Like holding hands with someone and jumping off a bridge, instead of doing it alone. And it had taken her all of thirty seconds to point out that the only place and time to do it that would work for both of them was on Mabon, under the moon.

Not only was Mabon the holiday associated with Knowledge and Wisdom (which both Thōth and Alethia had ties to), but it was _also_ a particularly weak time of the year for Innocence, which should (hopefully) make it easier for Luna to break ties with her current Lady. And of course Thōth had been, before anything else, a god of the moon, and while Luna might not _want_ to face Gelach they were both fairly certain that she _had_ to. Of course, Gelach was more a _new_ moon sort of goddess, and they were barely into the waning phase now, but that was probably also good, to face the goddess when She was at a sort of nadir in Her power.

So they had to be outside, away from the wards, somewhere no one would actually _see_ them either, because Theo was fairly certain that they shouldn't try to summon _gods_ inside an Unobtrusive ward — or at least that, if they did, the ward would fail _immediately_. And given the nature of her goddess, Luna had been trying to stick to liminal places as she made plans to leave Her. Which meant the obvious place was somewhere in the Senior Woods, the little area of _safe_ Forest, specifically the clearing where they held the Samhain and Walpurgis rituals. Not only was it halfway between the true Forest and the grounds, but it was also steeped in magics associated with endings and new beginnings, freedom, choice, and change. It was perfect.

It was also _really_ hard to find, when the prefects hadn't been out to clear a path for them and mark it with a trail of tiny light-globes. Theo _had_ come out here just a couple of days ago to make sure he _could_ find it, but with the light failing now as it was... Everything looked _different_.

It wasn't until he paused to catch his breath (after being ambushed by that stupid stick), that he realised that he couldn't hear Luna crunching through the underbrush behind him.

...Because she'd stopped, about fifteen feet back. She was leaning against an ancient oak, eyes closed, almost pained-looking lines of stress and fear around her eyes and lips.

"Luna? Are you okay?"

She opened her eyes to look at him, lips pressed together as though in pain. She shook her head. "I'm _scared_."

Well, of _course_ she was.

_Theo_ was scared — mostly excited, but an edgy, terrified, first-time-flying sort of excited — and he wasn't about to renounce a goddess who had held his soul for half his life. Neither of them knew _what_ Gelach might claim as forfeit for Luna's defection, but they knew there would be _something._

...And that probably wasn't helping, was it?

It was easy to forget how sensitive empaths could be when the only one he really _knew_ was Blaise. By the time Theo had met him, when they'd been five or six, Blaise had already been more than capable of ignoring the emotions projected by people around him. That wasn't normal, of course — Theo was pretty sure Mirabella had started teaching Blaise occlumency as soon as he could talk, and legilimens were cheaters, anyway, even before they came into the talent. But still, _most_ empaths — the ones whose gifts weren't just too overwhelming to be able to function, period — at least learned enough occlumency to distance themselves from external emotions by the time they were Luna's age.

Theo wasn't entirely certain Luna had ever been formally taught _any_ mind arts, which was kind of horrifying — Theo wouldn't want to spend ten _minutes_ at Hogwarts as an untrained empath, let alone ten _months_. He hadn't asked, of course, but it had been pretty clear last year that she had no idea how to deal with the dementor-induced depression that had affected the vast majority of the school, and while the average empath would still _feel_ the emotions of those around them, they didn't tend to get trapped into the sort of feedback loop Luna was obviously suffering from.

_Oops_. Theo was actually pretty good at occlumency, mostly because Blaise tended to take lazy mental defenses (from people who knew he was a legilimens) as an open invitation to go creeping around in their heads. He generally made a point of not projecting much of anything, especially around Luna, because, well...it was just polite, wasn't it, to avoid metaphorically shouting in someone's face all the time. He'd just kind of...let his control slip, preoccupied as he was.

"Ah, sorry," he muttered, forcing his anxiety back and focusing on how very certain he was that this was the right thing to do.

Not only for himself, but for Luna as well. It was painfully obvious that she wasn't suited to Innocence — not many people were, really, especially by the time they got to Hogwarts. It hadn't been entirely fair of Lyra to assume, when they'd discovered that Luna was abusing the Antidote to Suggestivity Solution, that she'd been intentionally potioning herself to maintain a mindset where it was harder to comprehend the world around her, but it _had _probably been helping to minimise the disharmony between herself and her Patron. There was no doubt in Theo's mind that whatever forfeit Gelach demanded of her, it wouldn't be nearly as bad as slowly going mad from constant, increasingly obvious dissonance in her very _soul_.

The goddess _had_ to know that as well. If She cared at all about _Luna's _innocence, She would release her with only token resistance. She _had_ to, because the path Luna was on now would inevitably destroy her. She was already ruined as a proper dedicant of Innocence, anyway. Luna had, Theo thought, been lost to Gelach the moment Pandora blew herself up in front of her nine-year-old daughter. It had only been a matter of time.

And he was _pretty fucking certain_ that Alethia would take her on in a heartbeat. (And not entirely because Lyra — _Eris_ — had assured him she would.) That was, after all, the very reason she was so ill-suited to Gelach — her inability to delude herself into believing the world wasn't as it was. And anyone who'd spent more than a few minutes talking to her had to see that half her awkwardness was due to her awareness of the discrepancies between what people felt and believed and what they claimed or implied in their speech, all the little lies and deceptions of social convenience. Or at least, Theo _thought_ that was obvious? (It was possible that spending so much time with Blaise and Daphne had given him a skewed perception of what most people could infer from others' reactions...) Anyway, there was nothing to worry about _there_.

(He pointedly avoided thinking about the fact that there _was_ something to worry about as to whether Thōth would want Theo to serve _him_...which, according to Lyra — _Eris_ — was almost as silly, all the Powers _wanted_ dedicants, the match didn't need to be _perfect_, it wasn't as though he was trying to become an Avatar himself, and he certainly wouldn't be far enough from Thōth to have the sort of conflict there was between Luna and Gelach, but... _No. Not thinking about it._)

She gave him a weak smile. "I can still feel your butterflies, but the thought does count for something."

"We're almost there," he assured her, suppressing his fear a bit more deeply. "I know She scares you, but it's going to be fine. _You're_ going to be fine." Certainly better than she was now, at least.

She nodded, though she didn't really look like she believed him. "Go on. I just...need a minute."

That was fine. There was plenty of set-up work to do.

The ritual they had decided to use as the base for the night's working was designed to induce astral projection on the part of the participants, allowing their souls — minds, consciousness, whatever, their _anima_ — to (mostly) leave their bodies and this plane entirely, meeting the Aspects they wished to serve half way, instead of attempting to invoke them directly on the mortal plane. They'd decided on this route _mostly_ because they weren't certain they had the kind of power at hand to allow the gods to manifest directly.

Eris claimed she had manifested physically when Lyra (Bellatrix, then) had called on the Dark to dedicate herself, but she'd done her ritual (such as it was) on one of the Black properties, before their Family Magic had been destroyed. There had been no shortage of magic willing to be shaped into her preferred form. It was, apparently, far more typical for an Aspect to appear only in the mind of the mage who invoked them. They might _appear_ to be present, but that was just glamoury — _sometimes_ proper illusion, if the Aspect was particularly powerful, or if the ritual provided a blank, or something. Luna had said that it was difficult for Gelach to actually _speak _to her, though, even in her dreams, and Theo suspected that Luna's experience was probably more representative of the way _most_ people — sane, non-Avatar people — interacted with the Powers than Lyra's. Given that they would be invoking _three_ different Aspects, it had seemed a good idea to do so on a plane where it was less demanding for them to manifest.

Which was _fine_, Theo didn't mind exploring astral projection in the _least_, but it _did_ mean that their bodies would be mostly unattended and helpless while they were off _speaking with gods_. (And they, unlike Lyra, didn't share their bodies with another consciousness which could 'house sit' for them.) He'd thought, briefly, that using this method would mean they could stay in the Castle, perhaps in one of the abandoned classrooms, but he wasn't entirely certain what sort of wards were in place to detect extra-dimensional travel. There very well might be something to stop them or alert someone if an infernal entity crossed into this plane within the wards. Since astral projection was, in essence, temporarily turning _oneself_ into an infernal entity, they might not be able to do it, or it might alert Dumbledore that someone was trying to summon demons in the Castle, or (perhaps worst of all) they might not be able to come _back_ to this plane (and _their bodies_) once they left.

So their bodies were going to be lying unattended at the edge of the Forbidden Forest for...some amount of time (he wasn't sure how long), vulnerable to...animals? Theo didn't know much about the denizens of the Forest (nor did he care to), but it really didn't seem like a good idea to just go and basically take a nap out here. There were, at the _very_ least, acromantulae around, and triffids, and who _knew_ what else. Blaise said it was safe enough if you stuck to wilderfolk territory, but it wasn't exactly as though the wilderfolk knew him or Luna, and while Lyra probably would have introduced them if he had asked...

This was something they had to do for themselves. Getting Lyra involved — beyond asking the occasional question like how, exactly, did manifestation work, and who he ought to talk to about acquiring a mummified ibis — seemed like a great way to have the entire process hijacked by her unrelenting _Lyra-ness._ She would almost certainly have let them use one of the Black ritual rooms, or put up proper wards on the clearing, or even just hung around to kill any acromantulae that tried to eat them, but she would also have _opinions_ on _everything_, and might even find some way to butt in on the ritual itself — probably to mock Gelach, she _really_ didn't like Innocence — and this just wasn't _any_ of her business. At _all_.

Theo was perfectly capable of casting a paling to repel spiders — and anything else with any predatory intent, and in fact every other living thing, because even _normal-sized_ bugs were creepy, and he really didn't want to come back to his body to find his hair infested with centipedes or something. It just took some time. It was _possible_ he was being overly thorough, but there was no kill like overkill when it came to hair centipedes.

Luna wasn't that far behind him. She wandered into the clearing just a couple of minutes after he did, while he was still busy casting. By the time he was done, she'd managed to get a small fire started — there were certain herbs they needed to burn, and there was a symbolic aspect, too, lighting the way back to their bodies.

He joined her beside it to lay out a blanket downwind — even with minimal insect activity, he still didn't fancy lying in the dirt for however long — and the talismans they had brought to help them find the Aspects they needed to speak with on either side of the fire. The ibis mummy (wrapped and plastered into a surprisingly small bundle which hardly felt heavy enough to contain anything, but it _was_ mostly bird bones and feathers, so maybe he should have expected that) and Theo's favourite fountain pen for Thōth; a copy of the latest _Quibbler_ and a heavy black veil enchanted to be nearly perfectly transparent (it looked a bit like a little puddle of water made solid...in a cloth-like way, it was weird and kind of disconcerting) for Alethia. They'd debated whether they ought to bring something to help orient them toward Gelach as well. Luna had pointed out that she was herself the most directly Gelach-related object they were likely to be able to find, but it wasn't as though it was _difficult_ to find a seed or an egg or something, so Theo had brought an acorn, just in case. (He put it on the far side of the fire from the blanket, because...symmetry? He didn't know, it just seemed like the right place for it. Ritual magic could be like that.)

Luna had gathered the herbs earlier in the day, because while Theo _did_ know what belladonna looked like he couldn't be trusted to identify ground ivy in the wild, let alone mugwort, and sweet grass looked just like any other grass until it was dried and plaited into coils and sold at the apothecary. (And according to the book Theo had found, dried herbs simply wouldn't do.) She had already twisted them together, wrapping the more brittle ones in what was presumably the ground ivy, one dense little packet of leaves and stems for each of them. He also presumed there was some low ritual meaning behind the way she had plaited and knotted the grass around the other plants, weaving them together rather than just folding them over one another until they were all about the same length, as they were in the picture in the book. He had done a couple of small workings himself, but he would be the first to admit that his knowledge of ritual design was more theoretical than practical.

Unfortunately, this didn't really seem like a good time to ask. Neither of them had spoken since Luna had joined him inside the palings, just going about setting up as they'd agreed beforehand, no need for discussion, and he didn't want to break the expectant, anticipatory silence growing between them.

Apparently Luna didn't either. When she'd arranged the _Quibbler_ and the enchanted veil to her satisfaction, she caught his eye and cocked her head to one side in a silent question. He nodded, taking his place on the blanket. They placed their herbs solemnly on the fire — Theo coughed in a most undignified way as smoke began to billow out of it almost at once — and, with one last look, one last nod, laid down, closing their eyes and breathing deeply.

Something had a strongly soporific effect, maybe the mugwort or the ground ivy? Unless Luna had included something else to make it easier to fall asleep despite their anxious excitement (and outright fear)... Whatever the case, it couldn't have been more than a few minutes before Theo's body began to feel distant, a sensation similar to one he experienced sitting in one spot reading too long, or just before he fell completely unconscious — _a sense of dissociation from one's physical form_, as the book had put it.

He opened his eyes experimentally, raised a hand to look at it.

It looked perfectly normal, he thought. Maybe it wasn't working, yet.

He turned to look over at Luna, see if she looked like she was sleeping, to find her, or at least a projection of her, sitting up, her legs still occupying the same space as her physical legs, her physical body still laying silent on her back. Okay, maybe it _was_ working. He sat up as well, twisting around to look down at his own sleeping face.

_Woah_.

If that wasn't surreal, he didn't know what was.

He grinned, scrambling to his feet and offering Luna a hand up — it seemed...weird, just _sitting there_, half in and half out of his body. She took it, looking around the clearing rather anxiously. "What happens now?"

"I...don't know." The book describing the ritual hadn't really said anything about what happened after they reached a projected state. "The book just said that we needed to focus on the talismans and follow them to the entity they represent?" He tried to pick up the fountain pen and failed, his hand ghosting right through it. "Maybe we—" He cut himself off as he turned to look for Luna and realised that she had disappeared. He had been _going_ to say maybe they needed to think about the connection between the gods and the objects that represented them, but—

A spike of fear shot through him. _Where did she _go_?!_

፠

_Focus on the talismans and follow them to the entity they represent?_

Did that mean why she had chosen those objects to represent Truth? She was, admittedly, not very familiar with the Greek and Roman pantheons. Mummy had mostly told her stories about the Tuath Dé and the Fair Folk when she was very young, and Daddy always said that the Powers were silly — not in the _the Powers don't exist_ way some people thought, but because all the Powers and Gods and Aspects are just different names and faces of Magic. Magic pretending to be something less than _everything_, artificially limited to something humans could understand. But talking to Theo and Aunt Cassie she had decided that devoting herself to a concept like Truth seemed..._better_, than trying to serve a specific entity. More...straightforward, she supposed.

And the Greeks and Romans had personified and deified _ideas_ in ways the traditions she knew _didn't_.

Gelach was mostly a goddess of innocence, unrecognised or unexercised potential, and Luna was (though it still hurt to think it) _not_ an innocent. She had seen too much life. And she could not do what Gelach asked of her, to observe the world and the people in it but refrain from action, to let events wash over her without impact, deliberately interpreting the world around her as straightforward even when it wasn't, and giving everyone the benefit of the doubt, even when she knew their intentions weren't truly good. She couldn't keep lying to herself, pretending she didn't know. She couldn't help wanting to explore the world in all its wonder, no matter how the experience she gained might change her. And she couldn't _not care_ about all the lives she might be able to change, to make _better_, if she saw something _bad_ and had the courage to act.

Aunt Cassie said she was her father's daughter that way — _Mummy_ had been _suited_ to Gelach.

Aunt Cassie didn't like to talk about Mummy. Luna could feel her anger and outrage every time she thought of her, even though she tried to suppress it. But Luna had _needed_ to know what had happened, how and why Mummy had left their goddess, why she had promised Luna to Her instead.

Mummy, Aunt Cassie said, had been _serene_. Luna remembered that much about her herself — calm like a still lake on a summer day, _deep_ and constant. Balanced. No matter what happened, whatever pains and tragedies eight-year-old Luna had suffered — from scraped knees and broken toys to the death of her first pet plimpie — just _being with_ _Mummy _made them seem small and..._transient_. When Mummy had died, it hurt all the more because _she_ was the one person Luna would have turned to if it had been _anyone_ else.

Mummy and Aunt Cassie had been Ravenclaws together, and according to her aunt, her mother had always been like that. Not _happy_, but perfectly _content_ to witness the world passing her by, distant and uninvolved, untroubled by its troubles. If Lily Irene hadn't forced her way into Mummy's life, or if she hadn't met Daddy, she might have stayed with Gelach. But she'd made friends and fallen in love, and she cared about them far too much to allow them to be drawn into the War without her. She had asked Gelach to release her from her vows that she might re-dedicate herself to Airmed and take on the role of a healer for the Light.

She had written to Aunt Cassie when they were still in school, a response, Luna thought, to a question about what it "hypothetically" meant to be a white mage, comparing the goddesses they served — or, as Aunt Cassie would say, _kind-of-not-really_ served, she still insisted she wasn't a proper white mage despite how completely obvious it was to everyone else — and the method of that service as an example.

_Artemis holds the innocence of wild, untamable places, as cruel and merciless as the beasts she hunts, or the ocean or the storm. Gelach is the distant, waxing moon, bearing witness to the unrecognised potential in the world, holding paramount the innocence of children, each young soul as perfect and ephemeral as a single snowflake. Priestesses of Artemis may serve Innocence despite having long lost their own, but Gelach's must lead by example, maintaining their own innocence even in the face of horror and suffering. And where Artemis acts impetuously, and encourages her followers to do the same, Gelach asks those who serve her to observe, and hardly ever to act..._

(In that one passage, Mummy had told Aunt Cassie more about Gelach than she'd ever told Luna. All _she _knew about the goddess had come from stories and Gelach herself, in dreams.)

And Mummy had decided that she needed to act. She couldn't just sit by and watch her friends _die_, especially since they'd been fighting in defence of innocent lives, muggleborn children who didn't even know magic _existed_, couldn't possibly have done _anything_ to earn the hatred of the Death Eaters. It wasn't their fault they had been _born_. Gelach had agreed — it was _unusual_, Auntie thought, for a priestess of Gelach to serve for so long anyway, Mummy had been practically an adult when she'd asked for her freedom and the nature of children was to grow up — but She had demanded that Mummy promise a child to Her service in her stead.

And Mummy had agreed. She had _promised Luna away_. She probably hadn't known for certain if she would ever even _have_ a child then, Luna thought — she _might_ have died in the war, or Daddy might have — but that didn't matter to Aunt Cassie. She still hated Mummy for taking Luna's choice from her, _especially_ since Luna wasn't much like Mummy, beyond caring too much to simply _watch_.

And, well... Luna was starting to agree with her. Much as she might _want_ to be like Mummy, much as she'd always _thought_ she was, when Theo had asked her if she'd ever thought about serving _Truth_ instead of _Innocence _— only a step away from each other, really, from a certain perspective — she'd finally seen what Aunt Cassie did when she said Luna was more like Daddy.

Because she believed as he did that the Truth — and the telling of it, showing people the reality behind the lies they read in the _Prophet_ and the well-meaning but often unintentionally misleading stories in the _Herald_ — was _important_. Maybe more important than anything else. Journalism, especially investigative journalism, was a _noble_ calling, one which had been corrupted and marginalised over the years to the point that the only way to do it was to hide the things the Man didn't want them to print behind silliness and riddles. (Only a fool, after all, can critique a king.)

Though Theo subscribed to the theoretical framework of the Powers, he had also claimed that its dualistic nature was sorely lacking in some areas — especially when it came to the Young/Innocent/Direct/Truthful Power, and its "opposite" of Age/Wisdom/Deception/Lies. After all, the innocent might not be able to deceive, but neither could they see _through_ deception, imagining simplifications of reality (_lies told to children_) to be _truth_ when they _weren't_.

From a certain perspective, the _very idea_ of the Powers was a lie for children.

Luna still believed in Light and Dark, right and wrong, and she still wanted to serve the Light, but she had also come to believe that there might not really _be_ a Youthful Power between the Light and the gods people believed in and followed and served. If there _was_, she'd like to know how _telling the truth_ was good, but _learning the truth_ was _bad_. There was a _difference_ between knowing what was happening to make informed choices, and becoming old and jaded about it.

So she had decided to do it.

And rather than try to find a god or goddess whose mythos resonated with her, she had decided to dedicate herself to Truth...in much the same way she had advised Theo _not_ to do with Mystery. Truth wasn't _infinite and unknowable_ in the same way as Mystery, though.

In fact, Truth was _very_ knowable — that was the _point_. There was an objective _reality_, and it could be revealed to people, secrets and lies exposed, making the world a simpler, more straightforward place (even if those secrets and lies had to be revealed in a complex, indirect way).

When Theo had told her that she needed two objects to represent Truth (Alethia), she had thought of the _Quibbler_ at once — the mirror that Daddy held up to the world, showing those in power for what they were, rather than what they seemed to be. The second object had taken a bit more thinking, because, well... How does one represent _revealing the truth_ with a single object? (_Quibblers_ notwithstanding, obviously, but just using _two Quibblers_ had seemed...wrong.) A veil had been Theo's idea, thinking along the lines that revealing the truth was rather akin to lifting a veil, allowing someone to see clearly. It had been Luna's idea to enchant it so that it _couldn't_ obscure things, Alethia represented more by the _having done_ than the object itself.

Even as her mind turned in that direction, the space between the veil and the magazine began to shimmer, the magic there twisting oddly, as though to form a sort of path or portal, which seemed like an obvious answer to the question of _what happens now_. _Now_, she stepped forward, following the talismans to the entity they represented, exactly as the ritual described.

So smoothly she didn't even notice it happening, the scenery changed around her. She simply _blinked_, and the Forest was gone, replaced by a completely foreign landscape — a sunset-painted desert plain covered with vast arches and fins and spires of stone. She was standing on top of the highest of these, looking down on what seemed to be the entire _world_ stretching out into the unknowable distance below her, whatever world this might be.

"Everywhere and nowhere..." a not-quite-familiar voice said, behind her. She turned to see...herself, or at least the image of herself, an odd feeling of not-quite-familiarity due, she supposed, to the difference in perspective. It wasn't like Luna spent a lot of time looking at herself naked from the outside. (Because the other Luna wasn't wearing any clothes, but then, Truth _was_ renowned for its naturist tendencies.) "...pretending to be Utah. That's what the muggle government calls it, at least." Alethia (Luna presumed) smiled, a soft Lovegood smile. "Hello, Luna."

"Lady Alethia?" The goddess nodded, the action strange to watch, not quite what she would have seen in a mirror. "Well met..." Would it be rude to question why they were in not-Utah, or why the goddess was showing her a false face?

"Because, like any lie, it's preferable to the truth — prettier, in this case, and easier to comprehend."

"But you _are_ Truth! Why would you _lie_?" How _could_ she, even?

Alethia smirked, a very un-Luna-like expression, if she did say so herself. "Artists use lies to tell the truth, do they not? And in this case to avoid melting your brain — not _literally_, but I understand it's a _bad idea_ to drag human minds _too_ close to the heart of reality. As do you. Good call, by the way, advising young Theo not to dive off the cliff."

"Thank you?" Really, she couldn't imagine _how_ it had seemed like a good idea to him to try to wrap his limited, mortal mind around everything humans _could not_ understand. Yes, Lyra Bellatrix had told him that she'd seen the universe as the gods did, and it was _beautiful_ (and Luna didn't doubt her claim), but _Lyra Bellatrix wasn't human_. She had been once (probably), but Gelach had been _very_ clear, warning Luna to avoid the black mage's corrupting influence — the Dark had offered the Blacks inhuman power, but the cost was making _them _inhuman. She was _hardly_ a good example to follow.

As though thinking of Her had summoned Her — which it very well might have done, it hadn't escaped Luna's notice that she hadn't needed to speak for Alethia to hear her questions — her Patron materialised before her, looking very out of place. She was wrapped up in a filmy black cloak glittering with silver sparkles like stars in the night sky, her mother's face, half-hidden by the hood but still clearly visible, frowning down at her with an expression of abject _disappointment_. (That was just _mean_. She could look like _anyone_, but She'd _chosen_ to look like Mummy.)

She sighed heavily, almost mournfully, in a way Mummy never would have done. "Luna. ..._Alethia_." The other goddess's name was pronounced with an odd combination of protective jealousy and scorn, and far more annoyance than Luna's, which had simply sounded...hurt.

Luna tried very hard not to fidget before the goddess's gaze, no matter how guilty she suddenly felt, like she'd been caught betraying Her...which she had, in a certain way, she supposed. (She didn't do a very good job of it, rolling from heels to toes and back again, fingers twisting around each other like tiny, anxious snakes.) "Hello, Lady Gelach." What did one _say_, to a goddess one intended to leave, regardless of the consequences? Her decision was made, she would not change it now. But though she'd spent far more moments contemplating this confrontation than she would have liked, she still didn't know what to do, or how.

"Gelach." Alethia nodded, acknowledging Her presence with understanding and sympathy (and perhaps a sliver of polite irritation). "I'll give you a moment to talk," She said, the false Luna vanishing in a blink and Luna's sense of Her presence receding. She wasn't entirely gone, Luna didn't think, but She...pulled away, as though stepping out of the room to give them some illusion of privacy — the room, in this case, being the open air atop a fantastical natural sculpture of some sort. (It _was_ pretty, even if it was a lie.)

Gelach sighed again. "I knew this day would come, and far too soon. But I had not thought you so far gone you would try to _hide_ it from me."

"I'm sorry!" The words slipped out before she could stop them, before she could think about them. But that was okay. She _was_ sorry. It just...didn't change anything. "I was _scared_," she admitted. She still _was_ scared, fear trembling all around her, making her voice small and childish and her body curl in on itself, hunched as much from fear as shame, arms wrapped about as though giving herself a much-needed hug.

Gelach sounded like She needed a hug, too, yet another sad sigh emanating from Mummy's form, but Luna couldn't bring herself to give it to Her. Resignation joined the pain of rejection in Her words. "I know. I know you tried your very best, but your soul has aged before its time. And even had it not, it is the nature of mortals to grow beyond my realm. Even Pandora chose to leave her childhood behind. I do not wish to lose you, but that is how it goes — a child is given into my service, and while they remain children, they serve me. And when they are no longer children, they leave. I release them, and in due time, another child is given to me." She smiled down at Luna, soft and calm and bright like the light of the moon. "I am patient. I will wait. But before I release you from your vows, you must promise me that your first child will come to serve me in your stead."

_Release her from her vows_, as though the Luna who had sworn her vows wasn't a completely different person than the person Luna was _now_.

She, that young, innocent past-Luna, had been a _child_. Mummy had let her stay up late, taken her out to dance under the moon. Mummy sang, and taught her song to Luna. It was _fun_. And later, when they'd finally gone to bed, little Luna had _dreamed_.

Gelach had whispered in her mind, asking for her help and giving her a very special mission, to watch and appreciate certain things about the people all around her, it would be easy, she didn't even have to do anything other than watch and _see_. In fact, it was better if she _didn't_ do anything.

Luna had said yes. Of _course_ she would help. She hadn't had any reason not to, and it sounded interesting, _appreciating_ people, as though they were art — that was what Daddy said they were doing, when they visited the museum, _appreciating_ the art, just looking and seeing and thinking about it. She could do that. It would be fun. And Gelach had smiled down at her, that same soft, moon-smile She wore now. _Good girl_, She'd said, and then, _I have a gift for you, to help you see and understand, and appreciate the beautiful uniqueness of every human soul_.

And when Luna had awoken, on the first day of her service, she had felt her mother's calmness and her father's passion and the way they _belonged_ together, threads woven together in the Tapestry of Life, and it _was_ beautiful. Until Mummy had died, and everything had been dark and sad and not beautiful _at all_. And then she had left the quiet safety of her father's home, venturing into the greater world, alone for the first time, made to face _hundreds_ of other people — unique, yes, and some of them beautiful, but some of them cruel and ugly and horrid, and all of them so _overwhelming_. She had _tried_ to see the innocence in their souls, tried to understand how they could be innocent _and_ terrible, but it was _hard_. It made her sad, and tired. Made her want to run away and hide, take refuge in fuzzy confusion.

If she'd known then what she knew now, she thought she would have said _no_. _I'm sorry. I can't help you. Not I _won't_, I _can't_._

Because she _couldn't_. It was _too much_.

And now, knowing that, she had to make another choice.

Luna wondered if Gelach had worn Grandmother's face, or Great-grandmother's, when She had offered it to Mummy, reminding her that _they_ had thought it for the best to give _her_ to the goddess, just as She was reminding Luna what Mummy had chosen.

But Luna was not much like Mummy. Not really. And she wouldn't give away a child's future just because she was _scared_ and _selfish_. Because that's what it _was_, putting off for yet another generation the consequences of that first, ignorant promise to serve. And besides, it _wasn't hers to give_.

"No."

Gelach's displeasure washed over her without a word.

Luna stood up straighter, squared her shoulders. It wasn't _fair_ that she should have to suffer whatever the consequences there might be when Mummy and Grandmother and Great-grandmother had all gotten to pass them down to someone else — but if life was _fair_, Mummy would still be alive. And it would be just as unfair of her to make her own child make this choice.

The goddess scowled at her. "Are you certain?"

Luna nodded. "I won't do it. I know I'm breaking my word, and I know I owe you a forfeit, but I won't forfeit the future of an unborn innocent. I _won't_."

Mummy's eyes — _Gelach's_ eyes — narrowed even further. "And I cannot force you to do so. But just as it is within my power to awaken the potential in your blood, to help you _see_, it is within my power to ensure the potential of those who have invited me into their souls does _not_ awake. Your first child will serve me, or you will _have_ no children. The unborn innocents will _remain_ unborn. That is the price."

Her Patron's words hit her like a bludger, all the air knocked out of her, somehow, even though she didn't think she was actually breathing. Forcing her to choose to sacrifice one child's future of a certainty — for she _knew_ that if she agreed she _would_ have a child, Fate would see it happen, because the gods would have their due — or all of the might-have-beens of all the children she might have, but would now never bear? She had not known her Lady could be so cruel!

Was it more selfish to promise a child's future away, or to never give them one in the first place? She didn't know. But every choice sacrificed infinite might-have-beens, even choices to do nothing. And this choice had already been made.

Gelach must have sensed her resolve, because She added, "You will never know the joys of motherhood, never feel new life quicken inside you. You think this the _mature_, _responsible_ choice, but was my service so terrible, that you would sacrifice all that, give up your place in the cycle of life, to save another child a few years with me? What _I_ see is naught but stubborn, spiteful petulance."

And that hurt, it did — she hadn't really thought about the future that much, about what her life might be like years and decades down the line, but she _had_ thought that she would be a mother, someday. She had imagined herself teaching her children — playing with them and loving them, and watching them grow up with pride, and bittersweet joy.

And she had not suffered so in serving Gelach that she would rather _never have been born_. Perhaps it _was_ stubborn and spiteful of her to make this decision. Perhaps it was just as selfish as it would be to choose the easy path, let her child pay for her freedom, if in a different way.

But no. _No_.

"It ends with me," she said firmly — as firmly as she could, with tears pricking her eyes. "My path does not lie with you, my Lady. Not anymore." She wasn't certain it ever truly _had_.

"Very well, then." Luna knew the image of her mother's face, contorted in anger and sorrow at her betrayal, her _rejection_ — the last thing she saw as Gelach left her alone in the false world of "Utah" — would haunt her nightmares for years to come. The connection between them, a sense of warm _belonging_ and _purpose_ Luna hadn't been entirely aware of until it was gone, vanished with Her, leaving her very _soul_ feeling hollow.

Luna fell to her knees, weeping for...she didn't really know what. For the children she would never have? For her uncertainty? (Had she made the right choice? How would she _know_? _Would_ she know, _ever_?) For the loss of what had been her place in the world for so long, even if she hadn't _belonged_ there?

For Gelach?

Luna _had_ hurt Her, leaving, and even more in refusing to continue the cycle. No matter how angry She had been, or how She was trying to manipulate Luna, convince her to change her mind, that sorrow, that pain, it had been _real_. And she hadn't _wanted_ to, she _never_ wanted to hurt people, even the most horrible people, and Gelach wasn't truly horrible, She didn't _choose_ to be as She was, She was simply what Her nature dictated. But she'd done it anyway. And it felt like cutting her heart out, giving up that last connection to Mummy, the goddess they had both served.

And now she was very, very alone.

፠

_Seriously, where the hell did she _go_?_ Theo wondered, turning completely around, looking for any sign of Luna, or where she might have vanished off to. After a moment, rather hesitantly, he moved to kneel beside her body. It was still breathing, so...she was _probably_ okay. Wherever she was.

"She's doing what she came here to do," a voice said. Theo wasn't sure how he would characterise it. Vaguely male, but not particularly low or high. Soft, but confident. Like the voice he imagined when he was reading narration, an _archetypal _sort of voice. He froze, slowly turning in the direction it had come from — off to his left, between his own body and...

...and the talismans.

_Thōth's_ talismans.

Which had apparently summoned Him, somehow — that definitely wasn't supposed to be how this worked, Theo was supposed to go find _Him_, but— That was _definitely_ an ibis. He'd never seen a living one, but he _had_ seen pictures, dozens. This one was more majestic than any of them — larger than Theo had expected, its head reaching well above his waist, its long, curved beak and neck jet black, contrasting dramatically with its snowy white feathers. It bobbed toward him, as though stalking through the shallows of a river that didn't exist, one glittering black eye turned to look at him.

There was no reason for a bloody _ibis_ to be in bloody _Scotland_ if it wasn't actually Thōth.

"You were taking too long."

Theo, completely at a loss, bowed. "Um. My L—" _Wait! Would _my _Lord be too presumptuous?!_ "Lord Thōth. Um... Greetings. And, er, my apologies. I...didn't mean to keep Your Lordship waiting."

"Young Theodore of the House of Nott," the god-bird said back — _How?_ — its head cocked to one side in _unmistakeable_ amusement. "No apology is necessary. Time is very different for beings such as I than it is for you. In both its span and its passage. Your dallying only causes you more anxiety, however, so."

So...the _god_ had just...decided to seek him out Himself, because He didn't want Theo to spend any more time panicking? That was just...

"I am not in the habit of allowing my priests to suffer when such unpleasantness can be easily avoided."

Okay, how was it even _possible_ for a _bird_ to sound so reproachful and amused? Wait, _priest?_ Did that mean He _did_ want Theo? (The relief that swept over him was staggering.)

It — He — sounded even _more_ amused as He said, "Of course. And regarding our present method of communication, I suspect if you were not so overwhelmed at the moment, the answer to that question would be obvious. You didn't think gods spoke English, did you?"

Well, _kind of_. Theo hadn't done much _talking to gods_ himself, but he was pretty sure Eris had spoken English when She'd dropped in on him over Walpurgis, and Hermes, when Lyra had summoned Him and Mystery had given him a glimpse of their Yule gathering, so...

"I am no more speaking than you are hearing. And I suspect you would find, if you were to ask your friends, each would say they heard my Greek cousin speaking their own native tongue. Magic carries the meaning — it is your mind that interprets it as speech."

Oh. That did make sense, he supposed, flushing in embarrassment. He didn't, after all, _actually_ have ears at the moment, being, well...incorporeal. (He didn't really have a _face_, either, but he could still feel it burning.) Magic imitating speaking and hearing fit with what Lyra had told him about trying to navigate in the Dark, or across the planar boundary, and how Blaise described legilimency. _Kenning_, he thought, was the actual word for it. "Er...yes. Well, um.

"That is to say, I was coming to find you because I want to dedicate myself to your service. I _love_ magic, and—" He cut himself off, mostly because he didn't have any idea how to articulate the longing he felt to _be a part of_ Magic. Also partly because, he realised belatedly, going off in that direction seemed like he might be implying that he _didn't_ want to serve Thōth personally, which he _did_. The more he'd researched the god, the more he'd thought He was exactly the sort of entity Theo was meant to serve, His entire mythos focused on teaching humans not only to write, but to _reason_, to learn astronomy, magic, science — bridging the gap between unknowable and knowable. "I mean, if Your Lordship would have me, I would be honoured."

"Of course."

That... That was it?

Amusement washed over him. "Theodore. I am a _bird_. And even were I human, I am _old_. The traditions you are familiar with, those of explicit compacts and gifts exchanged and fealty given in service, are, when all is said and done, _not_. I believe young Eris has, in her haste to repay our assistance, attempted to explain this, but she is impatient, ill-suited to teaching. Ritual and pageantry and the trappings of formality are human things. They matter only insofar as humans believe that they matter. You do not need them. You already have our attention — and mine, specifically."

Well that was...terrifying? thrilling? both? It was just, he hadn't expected Thōth to know his name, or why he was here, or...

"Time, as I have mentioned, is different for us. You _are _one of my priests, shall be and have been. Being and becoming. Changing as humans do. _Learning_. And so I know and will know and have known you."

...Oh. "What does that mean, though, being your priest?" Because if they weren't following any kind of ritual as a guideline, he was well and truly off the map.

"My priests work to further my interests," Thōth said, reassurance in His tone, bolstering Theo's confidence. If He were human, Theo imagined He would be giving him a kindly sort of smile. "They study the world as they perceive it and preserve knowledge, creating archives and translating old works into new scripts, and teaching their findings to others. They live their lives in emulation of me — and as they teach others, I teach them, expanding the understanding of _what is_ on the verge of human perception." Another smile-like feeling, this one more amused. "Live your life as you have always intended to, in essence."

"That— That's it? I just...do what I love to do anyway, and there's no, I don't know, gifts, or sacrifices, or— Lyra said it hurt, dedicating herself." If she had been pulling his leg about that... It hadn't _really_ been a consideration, but it _had_ been there in the back of his mind, adding to his hesitation.

"Yes, that's it. My priests and I have an _understanding_, you might say. Your friend Lyra, her family has its own understanding. Their patrons must destroy part of what they are to make a place for themselves in mind and magic. Her dedication was painful because her mind and body were not born to contain the power she holds, and so were re-made to do so. The little truth-speaker, she surely did not tell you her first dedication was painful."

Luna? Well, no, she hadn't, but Theo hadn't actually asked her about the specifics of her dedication to Innocence — it had been fairly clear it made her uncomfortable to talk about it. It was kind of a relief to know that he wouldn't have to go through any sort of painful ordeal, he supposed. He tried not to think of how disappointing it was that the exchange of gifts Lyra had mentioned was also apparently unique to her dedication.

Thōth cocked His head to one side with fond exasperation. "Not unique to her — that is a tradition associated with the younger Greco-Roman faces of Magic, to offer gifts with patronage. It is simply not the way I do things." Theo felt his not-face go red again. He hadn't meant to sound as though he was ungrateful, he just— "I want no sacrifice beyond your devotion, and the work you do in my name. If you wish to beg a boon of me, simply do so. If it is in my power, I shall grant it."

...Oh. (Theo found himself thinking _...Oh_ an awful lot tonight. This was not going very much as he'd expected at all.) "Well, um... I was going to ask if you could attune my magic to the Light as well as the Dark." Like Harry — he'd been learning both the light _and_ dark spells in Defense, seemed not to understand how bloody _weird_ and just flat impressive that was, probably because the lucky sod had just been _born_ with this amazing gift that Theo hadn't even known _existed_ until last year. He didn't even _realise_ how much Magic liked him... (Theo couldn't help but envy him sometimes.)

Thōth stalked closer, head bobbing slightly. "I could, yes — though that _will_ hurt. And you would need to take care to use magics from both poles, lest you naturally begin to drift toward one or the other."

Somehow, Theo didn't think that would be a problem. It _might_ be slightly weird and difficult to explain to Professor Lovegood and everyone in class that he wanted to start practising the light spells, too, but she _had_ told them that Lily Evans had done it. Yes, it would be obvious that he'd used some kind of ritual on himself, but not necessarily _high_ ritual, and not one that had an effect _beyond him_ — so it might earn him some sideways looks, but it wasn't like it was _Unforgivable_ or something. (And besides, he was the Lord of a Noble House now, so _if_ anyone had a problem with it they weren't exactly likely to try to make anything of it, and if they _did_ he theoretically had enough political clout to weather any untoward accusations.)

"I want to do it!" He was _completely_ unable to keep his excitement out of his 'voice'. He really didn't care _how_ much it hurt, he was going to be able to do _all of the magic_!

"Very well then. Brace yourself. We will speak later, in your dreams."

Before Theo could articulate his gratitude and excitement into something other than raw feeling, magic enveloped him like a sandstorm, eating away at his soul from the inside out, hot and terrible and overwhelming. If he had been able to, he would have screamed — _that will hurt_ had _definitely_ been an understatement — but he couldn't, and after what couldn't have been more than a few seconds, he passed into sweet unconsciousness.

፠

"Not so alone as all that," a voice said softly. Not Luna's own voice, heard from the outside, but one more authoritative — older and more confident. When Alethia faded back into visibility, she wore an unfamiliar face, round and wide-eyed, with short-cut reddish-brown hair and a protective, motherly expression of concern. (Naked again, which was slightly odd now that she wasn't just being Luna, when she thought about it.) She sat beside Luna, leaning back on one hand. "Alice Prewett and Longbottom. I liked her. You would have too, I think.

"And I'm sorry. I wish you hadn't had to go through that, with my cousin. I know it hurts. But the pain will fade in time, and you _are_ better off without her." She smiled, a self-deprecating sort of smile. "That would be true even if you weren't planning to dedicate yourself to me, too, by the way."

"Can you— She said I would never have children. Can you..." Theo had said that whatever penalty Gelach levied against her, dedicating herself to another Aspect she might be able to request that her new Patron somehow...

"No. I would if I could, for it was unwontedly cruel to curse you so. But that potential is not within my power to affect."

So there was nothing that could be done, then. She hugged her knees to her chest, hiding her face as she tried not to start crying again. She had known that she would not like the consequences of leaving. It wouldn't be a _punishment_ if she did, but she had held some faint hope that perhaps... But no.

And to be honest (which it seemed she _should_, if she intended to serve Truth), she wasn't entirely certain she didn't deserve it, abandoning her Patron — who _knew_ when Gelach would manage to find another dedicant? Her very nature made it difficult: anyone who sought her out would, by definition, be poorly suited to her service. She had wondered more than once how her great-grandmother had ever managed to find herself dedicated to Gelach in the first place.

"She was afraid to grow up," Alethia explained simply. "Gelach was drawn to her by her willful ignorance, her denial of the complexity and responsibilities of adulthood. She did eventually overcome her childish fear and wished to rejoin the natural progression of life — you would not exist if she hadn't. But you needn't worry on Gelach's account. There are always children like your great-grandmother, sheltered and unwilling to face the realities of adulthood, happy to watch the world pass them by with her. For a few years, at least."

That was, oddly, _not_ reassuring.

Alethia laughed. "The truth often isn't. In fact, it often hurts. Some people are unwilling to accept certain truths. You, for example, did not want to hear that your mother lied to you, because it meant re-evaluating your understanding of her."

"But I did." Not until Aunt Cassie had confirmed Lyra Bellatrix's accusations, but she wasn't about to believe _her_. (There was still a large part of her which was reluctant to trust the Dark, which Lyra Bellatrix undeniably belonged to, and Lyra Bellatrix lied about all sorts of things, all the time.)

"She doesn't, actually."

It took a moment for Luna to realise the goddess was responding to her last thought, rather than her words. "Oh, so she really is the fourth-year prefect?" she said, quite unable to stop herself pointing out the first of Lyra Bellatrix's many lies which came to mind.

Alethia laughed. "I was referring to the fact that Chaos is hardly strictly _Dark_ in the sense you think of it. Though little Lyra doesn't realise that yet, either. I imagine it will become obvious, given time, that social upheaval needn't be entirely destructive. It can, in fact, function as a force of revelation, in much the same way her attempts to deceive tend to draw more attention to the fact that she is lying."

"But she doesn't lie badly to reveal anything, she just likes confusing people."

"Is confusion inherently Dark? It is, admittedly, antithetical to Order, and a certain degree of Order is necessary for a society to function, but Order also encourages stagnation, which I think you would agree is _bad_."

"Well, _yes_, but..." But...she wasn't sure why that didn't seem right.

"Because you're reducing people and Aspects to a single characteristic. The system you use to classify gods, these so-called Powers, are neither Light nor Dark, good nor evil. The axis of Life and Death is, I think, closest to your idea of that spectrum." _Maybe_. Luna tended to think of the Light as helping people, and the Dark as hurting them. "But it is not a perfect match, nor is truth and deception, or enlightenment and ignorance, or change and stagnation, or peace and war. That model, flawed though it is, recognises that much, at least, giving them their own axes. Their extremes are defined with no consideration of their relationship to each other, or to Life and Death or Light and Dark."

"So Truth...isn't part of the Light." That...explained how it could be both _good_ and _bad_ to tell, at least... (And, perhaps, how people could be both innocent _and_ terrible.)

"It is not. Nor is it inherently Dark. It's _Truth_. I, and most of the Aspects you would consider Light, consider _balance_ to be good, equilibrium, because no person or society can function solely at the extremes of any of these axes, in complete rejection of the other. Even the one they call the Avatar of the Dark, reveling in pain and suffering, Destruction and Madness, moderates herself, lest she bring about the end of conscious life on this planet, Magic included."

"So what does that _mean_?" Luna asked hesitantly, suddenly uncertain whether she wanted to devote herself to Truth after all. Especially if she could not reverse Gelach's punishment. Perhaps it was better not to serve _any _of the Powers or Aspects or ideals, but simply live her life as best she could, doing what _she_ thought was right.

Alice Prewett's lips twitched in the tiniest of amused smirks. "It means that there are different ways to worship any Aspect. You _could_ go around revealing truths with the intention of hurting people, calling out their harmless delusions and the lies they tell to avoid hurting each other, and dragging their shameful secrets into the light. But you could, just as easily, help people see self-deceptions holding them back from reaching their goals and warn them of dangers lurking behind harmless façades — reveal secrets which could cause untold harm, were those responsible not held to account. One truth is clearly 'Darker' than the other, and one 'Lighter', but they're equally valid from where I stand.

"It _also_ means that even though I am, in essence, the revelation of truth, _what is_, I recognise the necessity of presenting that truth in ways which can be understood, through stories and models, digestible representations of an infinitely complex reality, and ways which allow it to be accepted rather than repressed, as in your father's satire."

"Or 'Utah'," Luna suggested, still not entirely certain the twilit landscape before her was real.

The goddess laughed. "Just so. And yes, this is a real place. On Earth, even. You could go there on holiday."

Maybe they should, Luna thought, looking out over the desert plain, so very _strange_ compared to everything she'd ever seen — Daddy would love it.

That didn't sound so bad, though. Choosing which truths to tell, she meant, not going on holiday. (Though going on holiday sounded nice, too — they'd only been back to school for a few weeks, and Luna was already ready for a break.) Even if _Truth_ wasn't Light, swearing herself to Alethia wouldn't mean Luna couldn't still work to help people. And in all honesty, she wasn't entirely sure how to decide what was _right_ for herself.

"That," Alethia said flatly, "is a _terrible_ reason to dedicate yourself to _anyone_. You _do_ know what you feel is right, when you're not overthinking it. Were you not just thinking that you wanted to _help people_? If you just want someone to tell you what to believe in, you might as well devote yourself to a god of life or fertility, and have the curse Gelach placed on you reversed, too.

"You wouldn't have gotten this far if you hadn't already known that dedicating yourself to me is more true to yourself. But all I can _do_ for you is tell you that the gift she revoked, awakening your talents—"

_What?_ Luna hadn't even considered that Gelach might have taken back her gift, as well — wasn't taking her ability to bear children punishment enough? (Though really, _not_ being an empath might be more of a gift, so perhaps it wasn't.)

"Oh, you're still an empath. It's in your blood. Gelach's gift to you wasn't _empathy_, or to See. It was to awaken the latent abilities you already carried, well before they naturally would have developed. And will still do, in their own time. I can also offer you a gift of my own, though if you think it a gift _not_ to Feel, you may not want it. Seeing things as they are can be even more difficult than knowing people's hearts and the echoes of their futures."

Luna didn't see _how_. She didn't remember clearly what life was like _before Gelach_, but she _did_ remember last year, and the one before that, suffocating under the emotions of everyone here at Hogwarts. (_Especially_ last year — even the _thought_ of dementors still made her feel rather ill.) She'd barely _noticed_ the maybe-futures surrounding them, drowned out by their feelings in the here-and-now.

"The truth often isn't pretty."

People in general often weren't pretty, especially when one knew what they were feeling, too. "I'm kind of used to that." And She wasn't wrong about Luna having decided, well before she entered this clearing, that she wanted to give her allegiance to Truth.

Alethia smiled. "Well, if you're certain, I'm not going to tell you _no_." The rock sculpture beneath them vanished, replaced in an instant by the dark, somewhat overgrown clearing she and Theo had left their bodies in, only a few feet away. The fire had burned down to red coals, but aside from that, it looked exactly the same as it had when she'd left her body. (Theo had not been overtaken by a plague of insects or otherwise visibly damaged by _basically sleeping in the bloody forest_.) The goddess, on Her feet equally suddenly, offered her a hand up.

Without any ceremony whatsoever, she leaned forward to lay a kiss on projection-Luna's forehead, a whisper of magic settling over her mind much like the veil which wasn't. Not that she had really _expected_ ceremony, she hadn't even _noticed_ her dedication to Gelach, but she'd thought she'd notice something other than—

She blinked.

_Oh. Never mind._

Where the image of Alice Prewett had stood, there was now a...wrinkle, or a rift, perhaps, a tear in the fabric of the universe, or a point of contact between this plane and another, twisting in the air before her, light shining out from it, or rather, raw _magic_, a conscious concentration of power whose reach was _vast_, connected to every human soul possibly _everywhere_, including Luna. She shivered at the echo of _awareness_ she could feel in it, simply _beyond _anything she could possibly have imagined.

A very _amused_ concentration of power. A not-thought, more like phoenix song than words, washed over her, or through her, a suggestion, she thought, that Luna still wasn't seeing what Alethia _was_, only the parts of Her that weren't _entirely_ beyond human comprehension. And a hint of _I told you so_, regarding whether it was better to show Luna a false face, at the beginning of their conversation. Followed by a soft encouragement urging her to return to her body, even as the _immediacy_ of the goddess's presence retreated, fading out of Luna's awareness.

Which _did_ seem like a good idea.

Astral projection wasn't terribly difficult, especially within the bounds of the ritual Theo had found, the smoke helping to relax the bond between soul and body — though not _too_ much. She'd made certain, in assembling the herbs to be burned, that their effects would be bound into the shape they required, and limited to make it easier to _rejoin_ their physical forms before the fire died, just in case something went wrong. (Using both nightshade _and_ mugwort was overkill anyway, especially for anyone who was already familiar with perception-altering magic, which both she and Theo were.)

All she had to do to go _back_ was overlie the space occupied by her physical body and blink, willing her _real_ eyes to open along with what she was currently perceiving as her eyes.

Which she did.

She knew it had worked even before she sat up, still feeling oddly distant from her limbs, far too aware of the air in her lungs and her heart beating in her chest, but that would fade quickly, it always did. The pervasive chill that had seeped into her, lying on the ground as the world turned toward winter, would probably linger longer. (They should have brought more blankets. Or learned a warming charm first. _Poo_.) She lit her wand, looking about for twigs and leaves she might use to build up the fire again.

It wasn't until she managed to stop shivering uncontrollably that she noticed Theo was still just lying there, his body dark and cold and unmoving, no hint of magic about it, no indication that his soul hadn't fled _entirely_.

For a brief, terrifying moment, she was certain he was dead — there was _always_ a trace of life in a living thing, _always_. But then she realised, horrified, she couldn't feel _any_ of the life in the little clearing, not the brush or the bats flitting overhead. She could hear other, larger animals moving out in the trees, but she couldn't _feel_ them, she didn't just _know_ they were there. She could feel Theo's pulse under her fingers, his breath on her clammy, anxious palm, but—

Was so much of her awareness of the world around her dependent on Sight? She hadn't realised... And now... Now she was _blind_, and the world quite suddenly seemed _far_ more threatening. _Unpredictable_.

It hit her all at once, the enormity of what she'd done tonight, of what she'd lost — what she'd given up, all to save some hypothetical future child who would now never exist. When Alethia had told her that she was no longer a Seer, it had seemed a far lesser punishment than taking the possibility of children from her future, but now — looking out on the impenetrable darkness of the forest, alone with a boy who might as well be dead — the might or might-nots of her future seemed a very _remote_ concern.

She wiped her eyes with her sleeve — she hadn't even noticed that she was crying again — trying not to give in to self-pity (no matter how _very_ tempting it was, at the moment). She curled into a ball, cold despite the warmth of the fire (crackling cheerfully, blissfully ignorant of her suffering), watching Theo's chest rise and fall ever so slightly, trying not to _think_. Hopefully his night was going better than hers.

And hopefully he would wake up soon.

፠

Theo came to slowly, the first sign that he was regaining consciousness an awareness of a pain unlike any other he'd experienced in his life. It was _reminiscent_ of suffering magical backlash...much like the Cruciatus was _reminiscent_ of a Nerve Tweaking Curse. He had the sense that it had faded somewhat too, settling into a healing sort of _ache_ rather than the immediate, visceral pain of being beaten — or, in this case, having his soul torn apart and...reshaped? Maybe? (He would have to try to figure out exactly what Thōth had done to him, and _how_, later. When he wasn't completely exhausted, and wincing at the very _idea_ of casting reflexive soul analysis charms.)

"Theo!"

"Luna?" He pried his eyes open to see the little blonde kneeling beside him, practically hovering in anxious concern.

"Are you— You're okay?" she asked, helping him to sit up.

It was well and truly dark now, the moon and stars obscured by trees and clouds. Luna had folded the blanket over him, and built up their tiny fire quite a lot — it had seemed a good idea to keep it small, since it would still be burning while they were unconscious — the space around them filled with ruddy, dancing light, but beyond that...

"How long was I out?" he asked. He felt as though his voice should be rougher than it was, reflecting his pain. Really, though, he just thought he sounded tired. (Which he _was_, he felt like he could sleep for a week — he had _definitely_ underestimated _that will hurt_.)

Luna flicked off a _tempus_ charm. It was almost _three_? They'd been out here almost _eight hours_? "I woke up a couple of hours ago, and I couldn't — I _can't_ — tell if you're okay, everything's just— It's _dark_. I was worried about you, but I didn't want to _interrupt_, or leave you here alone, and...I don't actually know how to get back to the school to get help, anyway. I'm so glad you woke up!"

"I'm fine." His feet were cold, and his _soul was aching_, but he was alive, and apparently a priest of Thōth, and when he'd recovered from the ordeal at the end he would be able to do _all the magic_, so really, he was _better_ than fine. Luna, on the other hand... "Are _you_ okay?" Because that was probably the most...overwrought thing he'd ever heard Luna say. Normally, even when she was terrified, she was calm and very...contained. And he wasn't certain — it was hard to tell in the flickering light of the fire — but it looked like she might have been crying.

"I... It's... _No_. Maybe? I don't— I don't _know_. I can't see your magic and I can't feel you, I thought you might be _dead_ when I woke up and you didn't and I didn't see— I knew, Lady Alethia told me, that Lady Gelach had taken back Her gift, but I didn't realise..."

Wait. Did that mean... "You're not an empath anymore?"

Luna gave him a helpless shrug. "Lady Alethia said that it would probably come back to me, but now? _No_." She changed the subject before he could think of a response. "What happened with you, and Lord Thōth?"

"Ah...apparently Lyra was right. I was overthinking...everything. Also, realigning your magic _hurts_."

Luna gave him a blank stare. "Of _course _it does. It's changing your _soul_."

"I know that, it's just...worse than I expected." By a lot. "But you, how did things go with Lady Alethia?"

Luna shrugged. "Well. She reminds me of Ginevra." Yeah, Theo could see that. Gin could be disturbingly direct at times, especially about the whole possession ordeal. "We talked about philosophy. But it was never that part of the dedication I was concerned about. Lady Gelach... She looked like Mummy. And She... She told me I will never have children. That was my punishment, for leaving, and not promising _Her_ a child. I..." Her voice broke, threatening to fall into tears again. "I don't want to talk about it," she said, her tone suggesting she thought he was going to make her do so anyway.

"We don't have to." The words spilled out of him more quickly than they should have, probably, but he had _no_ idea what to do with crying girls. The only girl he knew who cried where anyone could see her was Astoria, Daphne's little sister, and he could count the number of times she'd been overwrought and Daphne or Blaise hadn't been around to deal with her on one hand. "We can talk about... How are we going to get back to the school?"

Luna gave him a weak smile. "If you didn't wake up, I was going to wait until morning and use a _point me_ spell to find the Lake."

Theo winced. While that probably would work, daylight wasn't exactly a guarantee that they'd be safe, wandering around the Forest alone. But he didn't have any obviously better ideas. Especially since he wasn't feeling up to casting a _lumos_ right now, let alone any spell they could use to summon help. "I don't suppose you know the Messenger Charm?" Conjuring a little paper aeroplane with one's message written on it, animating it, and sending it to find the recipient was _hard_, especially when you didn't know where they were. "I...don't think I can cast anything, at the moment."

"I might be able to make one. Maybe..." She didn't sound very confident about that. "But who would we send it to, even if I could?"

"Er..." His first thought was Professor Snape, but he would almost certainly want to know what the hell they were doing out here — or worse, he'd take one look at them and _know_ what they'd done. Theo didn't really think he would have a _problem_ with it, but Professor Snape didn't already know about his ambition to become a black mage. Plus Theo thought there was a very good chance he _would_ have a problem with having to come out to the woods to rescue them in the middle of the night. Lyra, who _did_ know, wouldn't mind — she'd probably be delighted, actually, because they'd _done it, finally_ — but there was really no guarantee that she was anywhere within the range of such a spell. It was hardly a secret that she shadow-walked back to London whenever she liked, and it _was _a Friday (Saturday, now), she might not be back for _days_.

There was only one other option, really. "Professor Lovegood would probably be best..."

"Aunt Cassie? I guess I can—" She froze. "What was that?"

_What was what?_ Theo started to ask, but before he got halfway through the first word, he heard it too, a rustling at the edge of the clearing.

Was that a _wolf_, slinking toward them? It stopped when it got to the palings Theo had set to prevent unwanted bugs and predators from intruding on their ritual, whining, and disappeared again into the trees.

A moment later they heard a high, clear (_familiar_) voice lecturing (or rather, _berating_) someone. "—almost got _him_ killed, and while that would be no great loss— Oh, shut up, growling at me doesn't change the fact that you're _both_ idiots! And you— Sylvie? What's— Oh. Hi, Theo, Luna. I knew you were out here somewhere, but I didn't realise you were _here_, here. Hey, Cassie! Catch up, we've got company!"

Lyra grinned at them, naked and barefoot, leaning on a wooden spear. Both she and it were covered in dark streaks and splashes that Theo was willing to bet would be blue in proper lighting — acromantula blood — and she was accompanied by a handful of wolves — wilderfolk, most likely — of various sizes. (This was both weird, and simultaneously _exactly_ the sort of thing he imagined Lyra did in her free time.) The one who'd come across them first was the largest, and obviously the most comfortable with Lyra, sitting at her side tongue lolling out as her fingers scratched idly at the wolf's ears. Probably, Theo supposed, the "Sylvia" she kept dragging people out here to meet. (Theo had turned down every invitation for the obvious reason — they _lived_ in the _forest_. With the _bugs_. Also, wilderfolk were...weird.) The smaller ones — just puppies, really — formed a little clump, hanging back slightly.

"Lyra? What are you _doing_?"

"Oh, well, we were hunting, obviously, but _that one_—" She pointed at a wilderfolk kid who was positively _covered_ in dark blood. "—thought he could take on a three-meter spider by himself, and then _those two_—" who looked for all the world as though they were being scolded for widdling on the carpet, "—tried to save him, only ended up getting in Cassie's way, _and _one of them almost got her head bitten off, and I had to save the little one, which meant Sylvie was on her own dealing with three of the things — if she weren't as good at magic as she is, we'd all probably be dead. Or, well, _they'd_ be dead, and I'd be exiled from the Forest for letting them get themselves killed. I _told_ Cassie this was going to be a train-wreck — not that _I _mind, really, but she _does_, putting kids in danger and all, so—"

Professor Lovegood darted into the clearing before Lyra could finish her explanation, equally nude and covered in blood, and similarly armed, but with a fireball of some kind wrapped around her off hand, and apparently under the impression that they were under attack...right up to the point that she saw Theo and Luna standing beside their fire, clearly safe (and not horrifyingly intelligent, man-eating arachnids).

"I thought there were spiders," she flatly explained ("_Obviously_," Lyra interjected.) before adding, rather defensively, "Lyra usually only sounds that excited when something's trying to kill her." ("Hey!")

"Hello, Aunt Cassie. There are no spiders. Or any bugs at all — Theo chased them away because he's scared of them."

"I'm not _scared_ of them," Theo snapped. "They're just..._creepy_." In a _kill them all with fire_ sort of way. Personally, he thought Lyra (and Professor Lovegood, now) were doing the world a fucking favour, exterminating the local acromantula colony, no matter how sapient they might be. "Ah... Hello, Professor. Lyra. ...Sylvia and company." (He wasn't really certain how one was meant to address wilderfolk, but he suspected none of them cared, anyway.)

"Luna, Theodore. What are you—"

"Their dedication ritual, obviously. _Finally_."

"Ah." Professor Lovegood smiled, with a casual wave of her hand dissolving Theo's palings so the wolves could enter the clearing along with her. "I suppose congratulations are in order, then." Theo tried to give her a solemn nod of acknowledgment, but he couldn't stop himself grinning. "Though... Luna, are you okay?"

Luna was simply standing there, staring at her aunt, as though dazed. After a moment she shook her head, perhaps to clear it, though it did serve to answer the question as well. "No. Everything's dark and quiet and _lonely_," she explained plaintively, slowly walking over to the (obviously confused) professor and wrapping her arms around her (heedless of how very naked and covered in blood she was). After the briefest hesitation, her aunt returned the hug, mouthing silently over the little blonde's head — _What happened?_

Theo winced. It seemed insensitive to just _tell_ her, right in front of Luna, but—

"Gelach put her talents back to sleep." Of course Lyra couldn't care less about tact. Theo rolled his eyes — he didn't know why he bothered trying, honestly. "Not sure what the big deal is, honestly, being an empath sounds kind of shite. Actually, so does having kids, for that matter." Luna pulled away from her aunt to glare at Lyra, opened her mouth as though to say something, but Lyra just smirked at her. "Didn't Alethia tell you you're better off without that creepy bitch in your life? You know she doesn't lie, right?"

Doubt entered Luna's expression. "She didn't call Gelach a _creepy bitch_, but yes. How did you know that?"

Lyra giggled. "How do you think? We _are_ on speaking terms with Alethia." As though it was perfectly normal to be _on speaking terms_ with a _goddess_...or even weirder, _not_. Theo wasn't the only one who thought so, either, he caught Professor Lovegood giving her a sideways glance, too. "We wouldn't have suggested her if we weren't."

"_You_ suggested—"

"Eris did, yes." Lyra shrugged. "Though it was pretty bloody obvious, if you think about it. I'm sure you and Theo would've considered her on your own, too. Also, Theo? I _totally_ told you so."

Theo scoffed at her, because that was a crock of shite. "_You_ told me there was an explicit agreement, and that I should ask for a patronage gift! You didn't tell me I'd look like an _idiot_ because _time isn't the same for gods_, so _He_ already _considered_ me to be one of His priests, and _apparently_ He doesn't do patronage gifts."

"Well, I didn't know you were going to choose that old of an Aspect, did I? Time isn't the same for all the gods, either. If you'd asked after you made your decision, I could've told you to ask Cassie about it, Artemis has more continuity going back far longer than Eris." ("Wait, what?") "But I _definitely_ told you you were overthinking it. I mean, Thōth is a _bird_."

Theo managed to hold in a snort. "I noticed."

Professor Lovegood, fixing Lyra with an odd, uncertain stare, followed up her earlier interjection with, "I'm not actually dedicated to Artemis, Lyra."

Lyra blinked at her, still bloody and armed from the hunt, sheltering her niece in her arms — looking very, _very_ much like someone dedicated to Artemis. "Are you fucking with me?"

"No, I'm really not."

"I'm pretty sure you—"

"I think I would _know_! Artemis doesn't go in for that kind of thing."

"So you think she goes around showing up in mortals' dreams and shagging them at random? You admitted you're one of her Huntresses, I'm not sure what—"

"I'm pretty fucking sure I never called myself a Huntress."

"_Urgh_. Okay, I said, _you belong to Artemis, right?_ and you said _right, yes, I belong to Artemis_. What the hell did you _think_ I was asking? Artemis doesn't have a cult or a temple — or, well, I guess she _did_, in Athens, but that was actually kind of insulting, making it a social duty to serve her before going on to be all conventional and boring, whatever, the Athenians were shite-heads not the point. She has _companions_, her Huntresses. And, I mean, I know she's not big on labels, but you live your life in emulation of her, do what you do with conscious acknowledgment that this is something she would approve of — that's pretty much the definition of _white mage_."

For a moment, Theo was struck by how _odd_ it was, Lyra insisting that she knew more about a goddess Professor Lovegood _actually served._ Out of the two of them, Professor Lovegood, about a foot taller and twice as old, looked far more authoritative than Lyra. For all that _either_ of them looked all that authoritative, naked and covered in blood and sporting identical expressions of annoyance.

"Plus, Eris says you are. So there."

Then again, there was _that_.

"...My relationship with Artemis is none of Eris's business."

"Your relationship with Artemis is boring, and besides, we _like_ her. It's just incredibly annoying that _you_, of all people, think that whether something's _formalised_ matters even a _little_ bit, especially to _her_. Also, fucking asinine."

Professor Lovegood seemed to be rather at a loss as to how to respond to that, so Theo took the opportunity to jump in. "Not to interrupt—" ("Liar," Luna muttered, though she sounded vaguely amused.) "—but could one of you show us how to get back to the school? Some of us like to sleep at night."

The mad, blood-splattered witches broke off their glaring contest to blink at him instead.

"Oh, right. Sleep," Lyra said, as though she had forgotten that it was a thing that existed, despite the fact that Theo saw her sleeping during every single one of their History lectures.

"I'll take you back," Professor Lovegood said, rolling her eyes at Lyra's silliness.

"What?! No! This whole Mabon thing was your idea! I am _not_ getting stuck with the un-fun part. _I'll_ take them back."

"I thought you weren't allowed to celebrate Mabon." Theo was pretty sure she'd told him that at some point. Unless, maybe it had been Blaise? Whatever, it wasn't really important.

Lyra gave him an exasperated sigh. "I'm not, it's not a ritual thing. Miss _totally not dedicated to Artemis_ just thought it would be a good idea to teach the little wolves how to hunt, and she's using the holiday as an excuse. Which, yeah, okay, it did make things more interesting keeping them alive _and_ killing spiders, but now we have to do the part where we talk about what everyone did wrong and how to do it better next time. Which I have no interest in."

"Weren't you doing exactly that when you arrived?" Luna pointed out.

"_No_."

"Liar."

"Do you _want _to get back to the school before morning, Luna?"

"Okay, enough. Lyra, you agreed to help, so you're staying. I'm sure you can find _some_ way to entertain yourselves while you wait for me to get back," Professor Lovegood said with an insinuating smirk, her eyes flicking from Lyra to the wolf still sitting beside her. Was she suggesting...

"I'm not sure if you think you're subtle or if you're trying to embarrass me, but either way, not working. And no matter how fun orgasms are, there's really nothing arousing about waiting around in anticipation of more tedium."

Apparently, _yes_. That was just... _Really_? Theo liked to think he was more open-minded than most of his peers, but... She was a _wolf_. (Half-wolf, technically, but canine-shaped most of the time, anyway.) Granted, Lyra wasn't really human, either, but it was still kind of...weird. Uncomfortably weird.

It wasn't made any _less_ uncomfortable by the wolf shifting back into her human form — a few years older than him, with a lanky runner's build and no curves to speak of, also completely naked and _completely_ covered in blue-black blood — to point out, "All of this talk goes nowhere, and the little ones are tired. If we wait, they will fall asleep before the talking is done and not learn anything." Two of them, in fact, looked like they were _already_ asleep. "_I_ will take the humans to the edge of the forest, and the moonchild will teach and _you_ will explain what she says to the little ones. Come."

She popped back into her wolf form, wending her way through the overgrown clearing, back toward the trees, without giving Lyra a chance to object. Which didn't mean she didn't _try_, but did mean that no one paid her much attention when she did, including Theo. He just offered a hasty farewell, and hurried to catch up.

If he was lucky, he'd remain conscious long enough to make it to sweet, glorious _bed_...

* * *

_Chapter subtitle: In Which Luna Lovegood Discovers Blue and Orange Morality_

_Having one scene in each chapter means I can write sixteen-thousand word scenes, right?_

_Feel free to mock me for not realizing until Sandra told me a few months ago that I've been using the word "dedicate" wrong for **years**. I thought it was a noun, too. It's **definitely** not. Oops._

_Also, Theo's love of the outdoors is largely based on Sandra. I'm making her very uncomfortable even mentioning hair centipedes. So, um…trigger warning? (Belated, sorry.)_

_(I'm pretty sure Leigha is mocking me. I feel attacked. —Lysandra)_

_Thōth is pronounced "tote"._

_In case anyone is wondering, no, Gelach is not a real-world goddess. Her traits in this story (and Mary Potter, where she first shows up) are a syncretic amalgamation of the Irish goddess of the winter sun (Grian) and Roman and Viking influences including Proserpina, Iðunn, and Diana._

_(I'm resisting the urge to go on a rant about how Gelach and Grian/Áine being associated makes no sense whatsoever. Nobody needs to read that, it's fine. I'm okay. It's **fine**. —Lysandra)_

_Alethia takes Luna to Arches National Park. If you've never been there, I highly recommend you google it, it's gorgeous._

_And Lyra is meant to be 'explaining' what Cassie is teaching the little wolves by translating it into Thunderbird, because they don't speak English. She just really, **really** hates translating, seeing as the point of the exercise is repeating things that were **just said**._

_—Leigha_


	15. I called dibs!

"Harry? What are you doing up here?" an all-too-amused voice called from the other side of the common room, as Harry made his way toward his dorm.

Harry sighed. He didn't really want to talk to anyone right now, especially anyone as..._inappropriately cheerful_ as Lyra. But it would be rude to just outright ignore her. He wound his way through the couches and chairs to the corner she'd claimed for herself and Hermione. "I do live here, Lyra. Hey, Hermione."

Hermione, her nose buried in a muggle physics book, mostly ignored him, giving him a vague "What? Hi, Harry..." without even looking up.

"Are you sure? I thought you lived in Blaise's room, now."

He felt himself flush. Yes, it was true he'd taken to sleeping in Blaise's room. If anyone asked it was because, with the wards Lyra had put around his bed to stop his sleeping mind wandering into any of his roommates' dreams, he'd started invading Voldemort's mind more often again. But really, he just..._liked_ sleeping with Blaise.

...And doing other things with Blaise.

...Things which Blaise was probably doing right now with one of his Hufflepuffs.

Harry quashed the hint of jealousy that flared up whenever he thought of Blaise's Hufflepuffs. It wasn't like Blaise actually _cared_ about them. And it wasn't as though Blaise was just saying that to make Harry feel special, he'd been in the bloke's head enough to know it was true.

A small, paranoid part of him still worried that Blaise didn't really care about _Harry_, either — he _was_ still better at mind magic than Harry, he _could_ be hiding things from him — but Harry was aware that that was ridiculous. Yes, Blaise could be hiding things from him, and probably was — he'd definitely blocked Harry wandering into certain memories involving the other people he _did_ care about (Mirabella and Daphne, mostly, though he was also keeping a few secrets for Lyra and Theo too, apparently). But he didn't actually think Blaise was faking the things he _did_ let Harry see. He wasn't sure he _could_, at least not as consistently as he had over the past six months or so, and especially this summer. (Blaise could fake emotions unnervingly well most of the time, but not when he was barely awake.)

There were a few other sets of memories that Blaise said he didn't mind sharing, but Harry didn't really want to get into — things Harry would think were horrifying and traumatic, like everything that had happened with Husband Number Five. He could be hiding things _he_ didn't want Harry to get into along with them, any deep, dark secrets he was holding about _himself_. But, well... Harry had kind of gotten annoyed that Blaise was trying to protect him from something Blaise had obviously _lived through_ just fine and looked at some of them anyway, and they had been exactly the sort of thing Blaise said they were. (And yes, Blaise was right, Harry _really_ hadn't wanted to see those things, _especially_ not first-hand. If Mirabella really _had_ killed that bastard, Harry thought she was completely justified.) He'd just taken Blaise's word for it after that that he didn't want to know _everything_ about his...boyfriend?

It was still very weird, thinking of Blaise as his _boyfriend_, as opposed to... Harry didn't actually know what he would have called their relationship _before_ they'd started snogging and...getting off together?

He wasn't really sure it actually counted as _sex_, there were still things they hadn't done. Quite a lot of things, if Sirius was to be believed — Harry had kind of thought The Talk was a joke that only happened in sit-coms, but apparently no one had told Sirius that, so he'd spent an entire afternoon over the summer trapped in an _excruciatingly_ embarrassing (albeit informative) lecture about sex from the godfather he barely knew, _and his boyfriend's mum_. (Which Blaise and Lyra had thought was _hilarious_, because they were both unsympathetic, sadistic _prats_ like that.) Whatever, he didn't want to think about that, it had been _awful_...

Sure. Before they'd started getting off together. That was a fine way to describe their...whatever. Before that, Blaise had already been probably his best friend?

It seemed..._wrong_, to think of anyone but Ron as his best friend, but Ron Weasley was a fucking wanker, not answering his letters for _months_ and then having the nerve to accuse him of hanging out with Blaise and Lyra instead of him just because they had _money_, and trying to warn him that Lyra was _actually Bellatrix Lestrange_! And _then_ trying to drag him into his stupid shite with Malfoy — it had been pretty fucking clear, at the World Cup, that he and Ron weren't really friends anymore, let alone _best_ friends.

_Best friends_ didn't really seem to do his...whatever with Blaise justice, though.

Even before they'd started sharing a bed and snogging and _things_, Blaise had probably known him better than anyone else in the entire world. It was kind of impossible to teach someone occlumency _without_ learning all their deepest, darkest secrets. And Harry had gotten to know Blaise almost as well.

Well enough to know that Blaise really did care about him, in a way he didn't care about his Hufflepuffs. Harry had thought Sirius was full of shite, when he'd said that (no matter how much he obviously _enjoyed_ it) Blaise probably didn't think snogging was that big a deal, but as it turned out he was completely right. (Probably because Sirius, like Blaise, had never had trouble snogging anyone he pleased.) If he'd been spending his evenings snogging, say, Daphne, or any of the other _very_ few people Blaise actually cared about, Harry might have been upset about it — okay, he would almost _definitely_ be upset about it — but they'd talked about it (kind of, mostly it had been legilimency, but whatever), and Harry had decided that he was _fine_ with the Hufflepuffs.

He actually felt sorry for them sometimes, because he _knew_ they cared a lot more about Blaise than he did about them. (Blaise knew this too, but really didn't care.)

It was just— It was stupid, okay, he knew it was, but Harry had never really had anything that was just _his_ before, anything that couldn't just be taken away from him whenever, for no reason at all. This..._whatever_ this was, with Blaise, was _his_. And he couldn't help getting a little reflexively defensive about it, even when he _knew_ there was absolutely no reason to, because there was approximately _zero_ chance that any of Blaise's snogging companions (as Hermione called them) were ever going to have _anything_ like what Harry had with him.

They were, at best, a mildly engaging diversion, a hobby of sorts.

Which Harry was fine with. (Mostly. He was working on it.)

"Ha bloody ha. You're the one who just goes and hangs out in Slytherin," Harry pointed out. He might sleep down in Blaise's room...pretty much all the time...but he didn't just sit around in their common room like he belonged there. He'd only ever gone in there looking for Blaise (or Lyra), and once when he was talking to Tracey and Daphne after Potions. (And that one time in second year that was frankly embarrassing in hindsight — even _Malfoy_ wasn't stupid enough to just _tell people_ if he was attacking his classmates.)

"I hang out in the Sett, too. The towers are too sunny. Anyway, what did Dumbles want?"

Ah. That. He'd forgotten Lyra had been there when Dumbledore's note had reached him at lunch, asking Harry to come to his office after dinner. He'd fobbed her off with some vague thing about the Voldemort Visions. Which it _had_ been, if only _very_ tangentially. He'd hardly had any dreamwalking issues since he'd started crashing in Blaise's room, so he didn't exactly have anything useful to tell Dumbledore (or Lyra) about what Undead Riddle might be up to. But it _had_ come up, briefly.

Just, most of the meeting had been watching memories of Riddle in this cool pensieve thing — not quite as immersive as legilimising someone, but you could go in with multiple people and talk to them while you watched the memory, explain shite. And because it was actually a scrying focus — like a wand, kind of, except you didn't actually have to cast anything — you could see details the person the memory belonged to _couldn't_, like a story told in the third-person instead of first-person.

See, he hadn't actually told Lyra, or Hermione, or _anyone_, about the prophecy _thing_. (Well, _Blaise_, obviously, but Blaise was just as good at keeping _his_ secrets as anyone else's.)

He wasn't really sure _why_. He _did_ know that Lyra was planning on killing Riddle herself, and was organising something involving Snape and Gin, and maybe Sirius? He'd kind of implied that he'd...talked to Snape about it? in his last letter, which was _really_ weird, because Sirius _hated_ Snape. Possibly more than he hated Lily. He called him _Snivillus_, which Harry had to remind himself not to think too loudly whenever Snape was being an arse in Potions.

But then, Sirius's whole last letter was kind of weird and rambly (it might be contagious, come to think of it, the rambling). There was a bit that _kind of_ sounded like he wanted Harry's permission to teach Gin ridiculous advanced light magic, or maybe like he was trying to apologise for offering to teach her and not Harry? Which, on the one hand, yeah, it would be nice to know some half-decent spells to maybe use against Voldemort if and when he tracked him down (again), but on the other, it kind of sounded like the only reason Sirius had agreed was because Gin was scary-dedicated, and if Gin-level dedication was a requirement, then, well... What was the point of surviving his next encounter with Riddle if he spent all his time practising and didn't get to have any sort of _life_? Plus, Sirius had definitely implied that learning that sort of really heavy emotionally-driven shite meant a lot of working on your issues, psychologically speaking, which...Harry wasn't prepared to do. Not with Sirius. Blaise, maybe, but...

Yeah, no. He'd stick with the less advanced light and dark magics Professor Lovegood was teaching in class, and maybe try to learn some more serious elemental spells. And something good for running away. Apparition, maybe, seemed like it could be useful, and the animagus thing was just fucking cool, he'd have to ask Sirius about it the next time he saw him. In person, because the _rest_ of the letter was damn-near incomprehensible, a confused argument with himself about...introducing Harry to magic? (Harry thought he was already pretty familiar with magic? He did..._do_ magic. Every day.) Something Lyra had mentioned about something, and James wouldn't want Sirius to do it, but Lily and Dorea, James's mother, would have considered it _absolutely essential_, and Sirius would be kind of surprised if Lily hadn't done it when Harry was named, or on his first birthday, because she was a fucking madwoman, but it was generally done again a few times, like, after the kid was old enough to remember it, and Sirius didn't know, so he was leaving it up to Harry if he wanted to do it — whatever _it_ actually was.

Letters just didn't exactly seem like the best way to get any sort of straight answer about how to become an animal at will.

"Harry? Are you okay?"

Er, oops, kind of got distracted, there. But now that he was thinking about it, "Sirius said I should ask you guys about some introduction to magic thing?"

Hermione went positively _scarlet_. "You told _Sirius_ about that?"

"About what? Are _you_ okay?"

"Er...yes? I told your mum, too." ("You _what_?!") "Maïa's all embarrassed because she got high on magic and almost shagged me in front of Gin—" ("_Lyra_!") "—but what the hell is there to ask about? You just call up Magic — capital-M Magic — and say _hi_, get a sense of what it actually _is_. I'd be _shocked_ if Lily didn't do it when you were a baby, but he should know how important it is to do it again now that _you're _old enough to know _it_. I specifically _told him_ he needed to do yours, because who the fuck else would have — unless you wanted me to do it?"

"Er...considering I had no idea what he was talking about...I'll think about it?"

"Lyra! Why would you tell my _mother_ about– _that_?!"

Lyra blinked at her. "She asked? I offered to Introduce her as well, and—"

"You offered— _WHY_?!"

This outrage was met with a shrug. "Why _not_? She _is_ part of our world, now, voting the Black seat and all. It's not like you can't Introduce squibs, a lot of families do before they realise their kids aren't mages. So I don't see why I couldn't Introduce a muggle. Worst case, nothing happens. She hasn't gotten back to me yet. If she says yes, you should probably give her a run-down on what the magic high is like — it doesn't really affect me, so."

Hermione went, if possible, even redder. "So, does that mean— Did you, or did you not, tell my mother about...exactly what happened, after the ritual?"

Lyra smirked. "No. Somehow I doubt Emma's harbouring some secret lust for me, didn't really seem relevant."

Hermione closed her eyes, took a deep breath, obviously trying to master her embarrassment. Harry figured it would be good to give her a minute. "So, just to be clear, it's not like, some weird sex thing, or if I did it, I'd be overcome by a sudden urge to snog Sirius or something."

She giggled. "No. Most of the time it's not sexual at all. Though, no guarantees, if Blaise helps. Actually, come to think of it— Zee _should_ have Introduced him, but... Eh, I'll ask him next time I see him. Not important. I doubt that's what Dumbles wanted to talk about, though. He's not really into high magic. And it definitely doesn't take an hour and a half to tell someone you've been avoiding legilimising undead dark lords in your sleep. So, what gives?"

Harry sighed. It wasn't like he actually had a _reason_ not to tell her, beyond maybe just because she tried to keep secrets from _him_ all the bloody time. "Look, don't get angry, okay—"

"Always a _great_ way to start a conversation."

"Shut up, Lyra. What's going on, Harry?" Hermione fixed him with a very intense _you have my attention_ expression, probably worried they had another Chamber of Secrets situation on their hands. Which, he guessed it _kind of_ was, but it wasn't like anyone was being attacked _today_.

He glanced around quickly. No one seemed to be paying them any attention, but just to be safe, "There are privacy palings up over here, aren't there?"

"Wards, actually, pretty solid ones — Maïa's been practising, added exceptions and everything." Hermione pinked slightly under Lyra's praise, but Lyra didn't seem to notice. "Why do you think I'm going to be angry at you?"

"Because, well... Not angry at _me_, maybe, but..."

"Harry! Just tell me!"

"Okay, okay. So, you know that meeting I had with Dumbledore the first night back?"

"Mmm, yeah, forgot I never asked you about it. I got caught up with Slytherin and Rachel and cat armour and Éanna and the map... Never finished that, either, I should do that. But, Dumbles?"

Right, Harry knew about her attempts to bait the stupider arseholes in Slytherin into doing something that would give her an excuse to kick their arses. So far, this involved a first-year muggleborn she'd convinced to go to Slytherin, and Lyra pretending to be a prefect, he thought. Somehow. (Really, the only thing that had happened with Rachel so far was Blaise convincing her to join their dueling 'study group' so he didn't have to be their fourth.) And he was vaguely aware that she'd befriended Snape's awkward apprentice so that he wouldn't get overwhelmed by everyone at Hogwarts being complete twats and bugger back off to Éire and leave her with all the marking. Her words. (Harry was pretty sure she actually enjoyed Éanna's company, or at least not being the most socially awkward person around.) But, "Cat..._armour_?"

"Decided it would never work — fur, it's a problem. And shaving Missus Norris first is way more effort than I'm willing to put into this thing. Not important. Stop trying to change the subject."

"But, you make it so easy."

She glared at him, but it was Hermione who spoke. "You told me Dumbledore just wanted to talk to you about the blood ward and your mother's protection."

He had, yes, because he hadn't wanted to talk about this — he still didn't, really. But he didn't want to hide it from them either, and it might be better to talk about it, remind himself that...well, that Riddle wasn't just some poor kid who'd gotten caught up in a completely shite situation.

He meant, he knew Riddle was an evil git. He didn't think Riddle _should_ have become a Dark Lord and killed all those people, but seeing the memories they'd watched was...humanising, kind of. He could see how...how Riddle would've thought it seemed reasonable, he guessed. Because, well, everyone had been killing _everyone_ when he was a kid, hadn't they, what with World War II and the Blitz and all. And, in Lyra's words, everyone at Hogwarts really could be complete twats — especially in Slytherin when they thought you were muggleborn (and you _didn't_ have a terrifying force of nature like Lyra looking out for you, waiting to pounce on the first idiot who gave her a reason).

"Er, well...we did. Kind of. A bit." They hadn't really, just mentioned them in passing, more like. "But, well. He told me..."

"Spit it out, Potter!"

"Shut _up_, Lyra. This obviously isn't easy for him. Take your time, Harry."

He took a deep breath. Lyra was right, he had to just tear off the bloody bandage. "He told me why Voldemort wanted to kill me, when I was a baby."

"...And? Because I'm not seeing any reason I would—"

"There was a prophecy."

Lyra's face went _completely_ blank. "A prophecy," she repeated, sounding _horribly_ confused. "He tried to kill a _baby_...because of a _prophecy_?! What the _actual fuck_?!"

"Er, Lyra..."

"No, Maïa, this is just— What the _fuck_ happened to him? Did someone give him a fucking _lobotomy_? Because Professor Riddle is _not_ that stupid! Unless he wasn't trying to avert the prophecy, it was just prophesied that he was going to... I don't know, I really don't — there's _nothing_ I can think of that's as _idiotic_ as trying to kill _Lily's kid_ on _Samhain_, because of _anything_ to do with a fucking _prophecy_! Or for any reason at _all_! It's not like someone _wouldn't_ have told him about her thing with Kore — they tell him shite about _me_, and they liked Lily a _hell_ of a lot more than they like _me_!"

There was probably a question in there about who was telling Riddle about Lyra, and one about who _Kore_ was — probably a god, from the context, but Harry had never heard of them, and wasn't sure he wanted to know. Professor Lovegood had mentioned some...pretty disturbing things about Lily, just in passing, not even counting the whole _casually shagging_ thing, which was disturbing in a very different way. (Harry did not want to think about his mother and his Defence professor running off to "ride unicorns" together in the Forbidden Forest, okay.)

But he definitely _did_ want to know about, "_Professor _Riddle?" Because Lyra referred to He Who Can't Even Die Properly as _Not_-Professor Riddle. She'd told him that it was because Riddle had applied to be a professor at Hogwarts, and had only really thrown himself into the whole Dark Lord thing after Dumbledore refused to hire him. But _that_, referring to a _Professor_ Riddle, suggested that _wasn't_ the reason for Voldemort's nickname, even if the Riddle-wanting-to-be-a-professor story _was_ true — which it was, it had _just_ come up in one of the memories Dumbledore had shown him.

Harry thought Dumbledore could be forgiven for thinking that Riddle, striding about the Ministry like he owned the place with Draco's great-grandfather — a weirdly serious eight or nine-year-old Lyra lookalike and an absolutely _miserable_ looking thirteen- or fourteen-year-old Malfoy (Draco's grandfather) trailing behind them — had never really intended to leave his modest but increasingly successful political career to come _teach_. Yes, it was a bit paranoid to assume he had some ulterior motive, but, well, it _was_ kind of suspicious, Riddle applying for a job with _Dumbledore_ as his boss. He _had_ to have known, based even on the _tiny_ bit of their history Harry had just seen, that Dumbledore would _never_ give him a job.

So who the _hell_ was _Professor_ Riddle?

"Er..."

"Lyra. Have you still not told him— I thought you said he knew about Eris, and the Conspiracy, and everything!"

"He _does_ know about the Conspiracy! And Eris — or, well, _kind of_, I don't know, did you know her name?" she asked Harry, though she didn't actually give him a chance to answer. (Yes, he did, because he'd asked Blaise about it after the whole _incredibly disturbing_ experience of kind of sort of almost possessing Lyra and running into a fucking _god_ in her head.) "He just doesn't know where I'm from—"

"He's sitting _right here_," Harry pointed out, entirely unable to keep the annoyance from his voice. Honestly, he didn't really try, she was such a hypocrite — she _hated_ being talked about like she wasn't in the room.

"—though I guess there's no reason not to tell him, really. I mean, he can definitely keep it secret just as well as you, so." She turned to Harry, a smirk tugging preemptively at the corner of her lips — anticipating an amusing reaction, apparently. "Bella's not my mother, or my bioalchemic twin, or whatever, we're the same person, from different timelines." _What the..._ "Grindelwald's war didn't get off the ground in mine, I was trying to go back in time to make it happen, Eris — the goddess who lives in my head — thought this would be more fun. Long story short, I was born in Nineteen Fifty in a universe where Dumbledore never defeated Grindelwald, because he wasn't a significant enemy to defeat. He was still the Head of Gryffindor and the senior Transfiguration professor when I left — Sixty-Three."

Harry...had absolutely _no_ idea what to say to that. On the one hand, it sounded completely _impossible_, that Lyra was actually...some alternate universe Bellatrix Lestrange? but on the other hand...this was Lyra. _Impossible_ was practically her middle name.

She laughed at what had to be a completely stunned expression on his face.

So...Ron had been _right_? And _Blaise_ had _lied_ to him! That— That was fucking _infuriating_, really. _Much_ more so than _Lyra_ lying to him about who she was (even though he was fucking _positive_ he was the last person to know, or just about, he always was). He didn't _expect_ Lyra to be honest with him. But _Blaise_— That supreme _fucking_ arse had some explaining to do! A _lot_ of explaining, in fact!

"Harry?" Hermione said cautiously. He swallowed hard, pushing his fury away. Unlike _some people_, he _could_ control himself — he _would_ control himself, damn it! He didn't _want_ to scare his friends! "It's not that bad, really. I mean, there's not _that much_ difference between Lyra being identical to Bellatrix because she's a clone and because she's from an alternate timeline."

"Hey, that bitch and I are _very_ different people! _I_ never ran around worshipping Tom fucking Riddle, for one thing!"

"But you knew him," Harry said, his voice sounding distant and wooden, even to himself. "That's why you call him Professor Riddle. Or Not-Professor Riddle, whatever."

"Well, yeah. Who did you _think_ gave me a pet name in Parsel?" _Not_ someone who'd been half-dead pretty much as long as she'd been alive! "He was my Head of House and probably my favourite professor — Defence. Well, nominally. Huge Dark Arts nerd, relatively popular ritualist — ah, popular among the Powers, that is, it wasn't like you could do black magic openly at home, either. His public reputation was more like Snape's — he was obviously pretty deep into the Greater Dark Arts, but never got caught actually _doing_ anything, so mostly respectable. He's _very_ sharp. He didn't give much of a fuck about what we got up to down in the snake pit, but he definitely knew about everything going on behind his back. Bella said when _she_ jumped off a balcony and broke an arm trying to fly—" Harry nearly commented on the suggestion that Lyra had _apparently_ jumped off a balcony _trying to fly_, but on second thought that sounded like exactly the sort of thing she would do. "—_Not_-Professor Riddle just told her to jump off a bench or something next time, which is _definitely_ something I'd expect from Professor Riddle — they seem like they're pretty similar, which makes it even _weirder_ that he decided to become a fucking Dark Lord.

"Because Professor Riddle was _not_ Dark Lord material. Yeah, he's a mind mage and sorcerer-powerful — I wouldn't be _at all_ surprised to find out he was doing subsumption rituals to enhance his natural abilities — and the Powers like him, which makes him dangerous as hell, but he has absolutely _no_ interest in politics outside of Hogwarts. He spends most of his free time writing articles on obscure magical theory — and driving Dumbledore crazy, which is fucking hilarious to watch. But Dark Lord Riddle is like Dark Lord _Éanna_, it's just...silly. And a _stupid_ Riddle is...a fucking oxymoron, really.

"It's just _completely inexplicable_ that he would have— Lily wasn't _dedicated_, okay, but it wasn't exactly a secret that Persephone was courting her. Trying to kill one of Death's favourites _on Samhain_? That's fucking _suicidal_. And over a _prophecy_ of all things? Come _on_!"

"What _was_ the prophecy, Harry?" Hermione asked, exactly as Harry predicted she would, back when Dumbledore was first telling him about it.

"I don't know. Dumbledore wouldn't tell me the exact wording, he didn't want it to get back to Voldemort. I guess his spy only heard part of it, back in the Seventies? But he said it's definitely about me, and there's a line that neither of us can live while the other survives — that one of us _has_ to kill the other."

Lyra's eyes narrowed. "No."

"What do you _mean_ 'no'?" Hermione snapped. "Even you can't argue with _actual Fate_."

"_Watch me_. Riddle's _mine_, Harry. I realise you might have some sort of claim against him because he killed your parents, but his crimes against Bella and the House of Black were worse, so we get precedence, and Bella said I could have him. If you want to kill a Dark Lord, go find your own. Or, I don't know, start learning necromancy so you can resurrect him and kill him again, because I called dibs!"

"You can't _call dibs_ on _murdering someone_!"

"Obviously, Maïa, I can. And Harry, you do _not_ want to cross me on this."

She glared at him, magic roiling in the air around her, cold and dangerous and _entirely unnecessary_, because, "I don't _want _to kill him! I don't want to have anything to _do_ with him!"

"Well, good, then. Because you really shouldn't be trying to kill anyone anyway, even if they are _inexplicably stupid_."

"What is _that_ supposed to—" Harry cut himself off when he realised how _completely ridiculous_ it was to be _offended_ that Lyra didn't think he should be trying to kill people. She just sounded so _condescending_ about it! "No, you know what, good. I'm glad you think so. He's all yours. Give him a kick in the balls from me."

Lyra apparently didn't catch the _very heavy_ sarcasm in his voice, as she just grinned. "Done. So—"

"What about the prophecy?"

_Fuck_. For a brief, glorious moment, Harry had forgotten about that, only too pleased to hand over the responsibility of _killing Voldemort_, even if Lyra was being completely ridiculous and patronising about it. (When _wasn't_ Lyra ridiculous and patronising, honestly?)

Lyra clicked her tongue impatiently. "What _about_ the prophecy, Maïa?"

Her dismissive tone made Hermione look a little uncertain, just for a second. "You— Prophecies are a _certainty_, Lyra. You know that. Even you can't..."

"Prophecies are _dragonshite_, Hermione. Even the _real_ ones. Seers are human. Even when Magic tells them exactly what's going to happen, they get shite wrong, things are lost in translation, and it's only certain that _some_ outcome that fulfills the prophecy is going to happen — the _best_ way to deal with a prophecy is to ignore it. Live your life and pursue your goals regardless of what the universe has to say about it, because even if you orchestrate circumstances to fulfill it, that might not be one of the potential outcomes it was referring to, and one of them will still happen, and _specifically trying_ to force an outcome you like by focusing on the prophecy instead of just working toward an outcome you like _in general_ is _far_ more likely to result in an outcome you _don't_ like.

"And I for one am not going to just stand aside and stop trying to kill that fucker just because Fate _seems_ to think that Harry's going to strike the actual killing blow. What if my trying to kill him is the difference between Harry killing _him_ and Stupid Riddle killing _Harry_? No. I refuse to give a single flying fuck about this thing, and if you two are smart, you'll ignore the bloody thing, too. It _doesn't matter_."

"It kind of does, though," Harry had to point out, anxiety rising in his stomach again. "I mean, even if _we_ don't care about it, Riddle _does_. He's going to keep trying to kill me because he thinks his life depends on it."

"As opposed to trying to kill you because people perceive you as the cause of his downfall back in Eighty-One, and taking you out would at least save a _small_ measure of face? Or as revenge because you stopped him getting the Philosopher's Stone? Or because he wants to undermine Lily's victory over him by killing you at long last? It's not like he was ever going to come to the table and negotiate some sort of truce with you. At this point, this _prophecy_ changes _nothing_, it _means_ nothing."

That was somehow...not comforting. "Dumbledore thinks it means something."

"Yeah, well, Albus Dumbledore is an idealistic fucking _moron_. Bella and Riddle were _playing_ with him, you know. And he _never realised it_."

"They were _what_?"

"You heard me. It was a game. The entire war. I mean, it's fucking obvious if you just _look_ at some of the shite they came out with, ridiculous, stupidly complex plans with enough moving parts it would be more difficult for Dumbledore to _not_ foil them. I mean, organising a massive, _incredibly_ obvious ritual in the middle of Moel Tŷ Uchaf? the Three Days' Rebellion? staging a bioalchemic attack on the Ministry which required access that they could _easily_ have used to just take the place over? booby-trapping Platform Nine-and-Three-Quarters, and building that _ridiculous_ vault, with the inferi? They weren't _trying_ to just _win_ — they were fucking _playing_ with the Light, drawing it out and refusing to just take over once and for all because that wouldn't be _nearly_ as much fun. And according to Sirius, Dumbles had _no idea_. Excuse me if I fail to consider him a paragon of intelligence, here."

Hermione glared at her. "Did you consider that he didn't think it was a game because they were _killing people_?"

"No? Obviously that's what happens when you _lose_."

"Are you _honestly_ telling me you don't— _Urgh!_ You're infuriating, you know that?"

"Yes? I mean, it's obvious that you're frustrated and annoyed with me. I don't know _why_ — it's not like _I_ started a war to entertain myself. _I_ stupidly agreed _not _to go around doing that sort of shite." She pulled a face. "Compromise, since there are only three of us in the House at the moment and Siri broke the Covenant — _he_ didn't want me getting into real fights _at all_, even if another riot broke out right in front of me."

"That was _such_ a Bellatrix thing to say," Harry noted, stealing Sirius's favourite one-liner to change the subject back to a point he really felt needed to be more thoroughly addressed. She giggled, because of course she did. Hermione didn't, scowling at him for interrupting her telling Lyra off for being a ridiculous, bloodthirsty psychopath (as though telling Lyra off ever made any impression at all), but that wasn't exactly a surprise, either. "Speaking of which, why the _fuck_ wouldn't you tell me that you're from an _alternate universe_?!"

She shrugged. _Shrugged_. "Didn't really seem important."

"It _didn't. Seem. Important._"

"Well, the bioalchemy story explains the weirder shite like magic knowing I was born in Nineteen Fifty and my magical signature being so similar to Bella's. Only real difference is I was raised by the Black elves and Ciardha, instead of Mickey's pack and some non-existent Black metamorph. And even if it would be a _hell_ of a lot harder for Mysteries to lock me up for meddling with time and/or to study me like an exotic fish now that Sirius's name is cleared and the House is a political player again, that doesn't mean they wouldn't _try_, so yeah, just forget about the dimension hopping, it's not important."

"I kind of think it is!"

She groaned. "_Why_?"

"What do you mean _why_?"

"Why the hell does it matter where I came from or who I was before I got here?" Harry...had no good response to that. He hesitated, which apparently meant they were done talking about this. "So, is Dumbles, I dunno, teaching you some kind of ridiculous light sorcerer spells to use against Riddle, or something? I mean, he hasn't got a _bit_ of common sense, but he is obnoxiously powerful, he's got to know a few really good ones."

"Er, no. I mean, maybe, but— If I wanted to learn light battlemagic I could ask Sirius. And even if he _did_ want to teach me some ridiculously powerful shite, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to cast it. I mean, _ridiculous light sorcerer_, remember?"

Lyra grinned. "There are ways around that, especially for someone with a talent for subsumption and unfair magical ambivalence. Plus it's not like you're a weak mage to begin with. Normal thirteen-year-olds don't cast patroni, remember? But if he's not teaching you badass light spells, what did he want? I mean, you said he told you about the idiot bait on our first night back, right? So..."

Harry groaned, letting his head fall back to stare at the ceiling for a moment. Why couldn't she just let it go? (He knew the answer, of course — because that would be too easy, and Harry's life simply _wasn't easy_.) "We were watching memories. Dumbledore has one of those pensieve things you were asking Shirazi about..."

She didn't take the bait. "So a _getting to know the enemy_ thing? And what does His Excellent Judgment want you to know about Not-Professor Riddle?"

That was...kind of a hard question. He meant, he _thought_ he knew what Dumbledore was trying to show him — he'd practically _told_ him, that first night back, that Tom Riddle was a soulless monster, cold at best and sadistic at worst, just _completely_ irredeemable. Which he _was_. But the memories...didn't really show that. Yeah, it was pretty fucking obvious, especially in the earlier memories of him, in the aftermath of siccing a snake on...Draco's great-uncle? (Harry wasn't really sure who Scorpius Malfoy was) and in his earliest meetings with his Head of House, one Horace Slughorn, that Riddle wasn't, he didn't know, _normal_. But, well... He'd been a creepy kid, sure, but Dumbledore _really_ hadn't had any reason to think he was as evil as he actually was. Or if he had, he hadn't shown it to Harry.

In fact, if he hadn't _already known_ how evil Riddle was, Harry suspected that the memories he'd just watched would _probably_ have convinced him that Dumbledore was a paranoid old man, reading too much into them. Because, well, he hadn't really shown Harry anything he hadn't already seen, spending the summer with the Blacks and the Zabinis. Of course, Dumbledore would probably think that just meant Lyra and Blaise were every bit as evil as Riddle, which they _definitely _weren't.

Like, Riddle had been unnervingly contained and..._aware_, of the people around him, too confident for an eleven-year-old in an entirely new world, but Harry was pretty sure that was just a child-legilimens thing. He'd seen the same creepy, entirely unimpressed stare on Blaise, even when he was five or six. Granted, he hadn't come into his legilimency by then, but he'd been an empath longer than he could remember, and had _definitely_ been a competent occlumens already.

And yes, Riddle had been absolutely _ruthless_, trying to make a place for himself in Slytherin despite being muggleborn (as far as he or anyone else had known), and dirt poor to boot. But he didn't _obviously enjoy _hurting people. Certainly less so than Lyra. Hell, Harry could imagine _Hermione_ convincing herself that that level of violence was necessary, if she had to live in Slytherin with Draco. (She'd _set Snape on fire_, and he was _a professor_.)

In the later memories, like the one where Riddle was convincing the Headmaster of the time to expel Hagrid over Aragog and the Chamber of Secrets petrifications, he was much _smoother_, clearly manipulating everyone involved to shift the blame off of himself. But it was only clear because Harry knew he'd had an ulterior motive in turning Hagrid in. If he hadn't already known, hadn't heard it from the diary horcrux itself, he might not have believed it at all. Because, see, Hagrid had been _raising an acromantula_, _in the school_. And while Harry would easily admit that the acromantula was clearly a conscious, intelligent _being_, not just some mindless creature, Aragog had given his children permission to _eat _him and Ron. (It had taken all of two seconds for Harry to decide that no matter _how_ fucked up it was for Lyra to be killing sentient beings for fun, as long as she stuck to giant spiders he didn't care.)

Dumbledore had tried to use the whole incident as an example of the way Riddle didn't care who got the blame for his crimes as long as _he_ got off scot-free, playing on Harry's fondness for Hagrid. And Harry _would_ always have a soft spot for the gentle giant, the man who had introduced him to the magical world. But that was itself kind of manipulative, and it _had_ kind of been a good thing, even if Riddle did it for a bad reason. Not entirely unlike Lyra capturing a bunch of Death Eaters at the World Cup — she had definitely _not _done it to help the Aurors, but it was still objectively a _good thing_.

And yes, Riddle had gone off to become a disgusting, manipulative _acquisitions agent_ for some Knockturn Alley shop, and then, after disappearing from Britain for a few years, returned to become a slimy, manipulative politician, writing bills and arguing for laws that served the Malfoys' interests, but...that was what salesmen and politicians _did_, serving their own interests, or those of their employer, or whatever. (Including Dumbledore, though he wasn't very good at it.) Mira had spent _all summer_ jumping back over here to do that sort of thing for the Department of Education.

And then he'd interviewed at Hogwarts, to become the Defence professor. His appearance, in that memory, was shocking — very different from the face he'd had only a few years before, which Dumbledore said was simply a mask of glamoury, imitating the charming features he'd once had. He hadn't worn it when he came to the Castle, showing Dumbledore his true face, features waxen and burned-looking and eyes painfully bloodshot. Dumbledore claimed that this was due to his delving into the Dark Arts, his face reflecting the state of his soul, but Harry _did_ have to wonder, because the Blacks were, collectively speaking, every bit as bad as Riddle. Sirius had let slip that they used to _kill people_ in human sacrifice rituals — that _Sirius himself_ had taken part in these rituals, when he was a kid and hadn't known any better — and _he_ didn't look like he'd been in some horrific potions accident. In fact, Harry had _never_ seen an ugly Black, or even a portrait of one. (Seriously, every one of them was unnaturally pretty, it was fucking weird.)

Harry _wanted_ to believe Tom Riddle was evil, and always had been. He _knew_ he had been — Blaise had told him what making a horcrux entailed, killing a person and twisting their soul into a grotesque copy of yours, overwriting its identity like an all-encompassing compulsion they could _never_ escape from, trapping it in a book or necklace or whatever, possibly _forever_. And Riddle had done it _at least_ five times. And he _knew_ that Riddle had been a sick motherfucker _long_ before he made his first horcrux. Gin had told him a few things about Riddle when he'd been their age that legitimately turned his stomach. According to her, he used to go out into muggle London and torture people over the hols just because he found it _relaxing_, or something, mind raping them and cutting them up. That he got off on it, turning people into fucking _puppets_. He hadn't _killed_ anyone before he made his first horcrux, she didn't think, but neither one of them doubted that he would've become a fucking serial killer even if he _hadn't_ become a Dark Lord.

But comparing that, what he already _knew_ about Riddle, to Dumbledore's memories of him, he couldn't help finding Riddle more sympathetic _now_ than he had two hours ago.

"I..._think_ he wanted to show me what a terrible person Riddle was, but..."

"But?" Hermione echoed.

"Well, I kind of already knew that, didn't I? I mean, Gin has to have told you..." From the look on Hermione's face, she had. "Yeah. In comparison, the things Dumbledore had to show me were— He didn't seem like such a bad guy. Not worse than _you_, Lyra, or Blaise, and _definitely_ not as bad as he actually _was_. Was the professor version of him a serial killer, by the way?" he asked, as it occurred to him Lyra might be able to confirm that theory.

Lyra raised an eyebrow at him. "_I_ don't know. The only professor I've had who discusses their sex lives with their students is Cassie."

"Sex and murder are _not_ analogous subjects, Lyra," Hermione informed her, inarticulate discomfort escaping her hold on her mind, along with a hint of doubt — _are they?_ She redoubled her efforts to occlude almost immediately, much to Harry's relief. He _really_ didn't want to follow that train of thought, which would _undoubtedly_ lead to her and Lyra's sex life. (People were _depressingly_ predictable like that — almost _everything_ led back to sex, and surprisingly quickly.)

"Maybe not for _you_."

Hermione let her head fall to the table, her hair spilling over her books. The pile of curls muttered something that sounded _very_ much like, "I'm dating a crazy person."

"How can you _possibly_ still sound surprised about that? Was this a one-time thing?" she asked Harry, ignoring Hermione's frustrated groan. "Because if not, you should try to get him to show you the Battle of Denbigh Moor. I hear it was fucking awesome."

"Meaning..."

"Riddle versus Dumbledore, Bella holding off half the Auror Corp, their allies — Greyback and the vampire division, mostly, but also a fair few hired warlocks — completely slaughtered the Hit Wizards and volunteer corps, while the actual Death Eaters staged a series of coordinated raids across at least forty-five magical and muggle targets. Retaliation for the Diagon Alley Massacre, the death toll was well over a thousand. How do you not know this?"

"Er..." Because that definitely wasn't the sort of thing _he _would call _fucking awesome_, any more than he would run off to join in a fucking _riot_ just because it was there? Because he couldn't just think of the casualties as _numbers_, and he didn't _like_ thinking about his parents and their friends being in mortal danger? It really wasn't worth trying to explain either answer.

"Now, Lyra, you know one can't be expected to learn any actual _history_ at _Hogwarts_."

Yeah, Harry wasn't touching that one, either. Hermione could rant about the shortcomings of their various professors for _hours_.

Lyra wasn't either — she just shrugged. Hermione huffed, returning to her book in a show of ignoring them right back (though Harry was certain she was still listening). "If you can't get Dumbledore to show you, ask Siri about it. I mean, I _did_ read about it in one of Maïa's history books, but he's the one who told me how impressive it was — like Cassie at the World Cup, but against actual battlemages. I haven't found a pensieve yet, but if _I_ were a legilimens, I would _definitely_ get him to show me."

Somehow, Harry thought Sirius might be less enthusiastic about sharing battle stories with _him_ than he was with "Little Bella", even if Harry wanted to hear them. (Did Sirius know who she was? Was _that_ why he called her Bella?) They kind of brought out the worst in each other, like just because there were two of them they didn't have to pretend to not be completely insane, and Sirius tried to at least fake being a better person than he actually _was_ around Harry. Which meant trying to not be inappropriately excited or nostalgic or whatever about situations where people actually _died_. (Either that or looking at Harry reminded Sirius that people he'd actually _cared about_ had died. Maybe both.)

But that really didn't seem worth trying to explain to _Bellatrix Lestrange_ either — even if Lyra obviously wasn't _quite_ as violently sadistic as the older, Riddle-fucked version of herself. "No, it wasn't a one-time thing. I think he wanted to kind of set the stage, show me what kind of _person_ Riddle is, first. He's going to keep looking for other memories that kind of show how Riddle thinks."

Lyra raised an eyebrow at him. "You _do_ realise that the things Riddle does and says, especially anywhere His Excellent Analysis might see him, aren't going to actually show you anything about how he thinks, right? He's kind of like Zee like that."

Harry snorted. "Yeah. Dumbledore knows that, too, believe it or not. He kind of hinted that it would take longer to get the next batch of memories together because he needed to convince the D.L.E. to share some of the shite they got from prisoners in plea deals, and Snape — you know, get some insight on what actually happened behind the scenes with the Death Eaters."

"Like Sev will really be hard to convince? Though... Look, go through the Potter vault and properties and see if you can find a pensieve — the only one I've been able to find is broken."

"Er...why?"

"Because Cissy and de Mort used to play Autocrátores. And also because I'm _not_ a legilimens and I missed thirty years of potentially interesting shite, obviously."

Still fucking weird, hearing her say something like that, but Harry was already starting to get used to the idea that Lyra was a time traveller, not a clone... Not that that _hadn't_ been weird. Whatever.

"Autocrátores?" Hermione looked up, her curiosity apparently overcoming her annoyance.

"Stratēgoi Autokrátores. It's this stupidly complicated strategy game based on Alexander's invasion of the Achaemenid Empire. The specifics aren't important. She definitely won't let Dumbledore see those memories — if you want to know how someone thinks, looking at the way they plan a military campaign or a political takeover is a hell of a lot better than looking at the act they put on for their followers and political opponents, but that's exactly why it would be a good idea to look at _Riddle's_ strategy, and she _would _let _us_. I mean, I would say look at the actual _war_, but there's really no way to tell how much of that was Bella. He was definitely the tactical commander, because there's no way Bella would just sit back and direct a battle, but he's a muggle-raised orphan. Didn't exactly get a proper education. He'd have to be a complete idiot not to take her advice on the overall direction and specific objectives of the campaign. Which he wasn't...Samhain attack notwithstanding. So?"

Harry sighed. "I'll look for one." Not that he actually _minded_, that thing was _really_ cool, he was sure he could think of other things to use it for, memories he might be able to convince people to share that he didn't actually want to see _from their perspective,_ but just like a movie he could walk around in, or something. Being able to re-live the World Cup, complete with all the details he hadn't been able to notice at the time, for example.

She grinned. "Good. I hadn't even considered trying to get background on him from his enemies, but this is good. Coordinate with Gin putting together an understanding of the wanker, different perspectives to get the whole picture, you know. I would say Sirius and Sev, too, but I don't really think either of them knew him very well. If you want to give it a shot, it can't really hurt, though. Try to figure out why Not-Professor Riddle would do something so _phenomenally stupid_ as to attack you — and by extension, your mother — on Samhain."

"I'm pretty sure we already answered that one. The prophecy?" he reminded her, ignoring how irritating it was when she gave orders like she just _expected_ him to do whatever she said. Mostly because it wasn't actually a bad suggestion.

"What part of _phenomenally stupid_ do you not understand? We need to know what the _hell_ he was thinking to actually pay it any attention at all."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "I can't believe I'm saying this, but you _did_ say Bellatrix was willing to give us information, right?"

Lyra scowled. "Yes, but fuck that bitch." Harry still wasn't entirely certain what Bellatrix had done — when Lyra had first told him that she'd visited her evil twin (he was still going to think of them that way, he decided), she'd seemed to be completely fine with the escaped madwoman — but he didn't really care. Lyra not wanting to talk to her or be anything like her was, as far as he was concerned, a good thing. Especially since they were apparently the same fucking person. "I'm not going to ask _her_ for help. I _will_ start working on Cissy to give us what she knows, though. Worst case, if you can't find a pensieve, I'm thinking about making one for my Runes project anyway, so. And don't tell Dumbledore any of this. If he finds out about the Conspiracy, he'll just get in the way."

_No, you think?_ If anything, _get in the way_ was probably understating it. Harry was pretty bloody certain Dumbledore wouldn't want Lyra anywhere near his attempt to prepare Harry to finish off Voldemort. And not just because she would almost certainly tell Dumbledore he was a fucking moron to want _Harry_ to do it, bugger off so she could do it herself.

"And I _do_ still think we should try to find out exactly what the prophecy says," Hermione pointed out. "It could be _important_," she added defensively, in response to Lyra's annoyed glare. "Especially if Riddle let it influence his movements toward the end of the war."

Lyra _harrumphed_. "Well, if you want to look into it, you know I'm not going to stop you. But I don't want to know. It only matters if you let it matter, and I say it doesn't."

"This is why you're so bad at divination, you know."

"No, I'm bad at divination because divination is a crapshoot."

"Well, if you actually believed it would work—"

"But I _don't_. Arithmancy, yes, probabilities are fine. And specific inquiry charms, whatever. But—"

"I'm just...gonna go," Harry muttered, edging away from the girls and their bickering.

They completely ignored him. "But _nothing_, there's no reason you shouldn't be able to—"

"Fate doesn't like me. Which is fair, I don't like _it_, either. So, yes, there _is_ a reason I—"

"But you can do every single _part_ of it, reading magic and interpreting it, and inquiry charms are basically identical in principle, and—"

Yeah, Harry didn't need to hear this argument again. He was just going to go up to his room, and... Probably sit around for twenty minutes trying to remember why he'd come up here in the first place, he'd completely forgotten, in the midst of the revelation about _where Lyra came from_ and Blaise being a lying liar who lies, and talking about Riddle, and _everything_.

Bugger.

* * *

_Minor ret-con: we're including Candidus Malfoy in this fic, one of Sandra's characters, who didn't exist in **Coming of Age in the House of Black** (the story this one is a divergence from). This means that the Malfoy at Bella/Lyra's fifth birthday party with Tom would have been Candidus (a couple years older than Tom, in the same class as Cygnus), possibly accompanied by his son, Abraxas, who would have been about twelve, and quite plausibly would have seemed very grown up to five-year-old Bella. (Abraxas knocked up his future wife when he was thirteen or fourteen. Shotgun wedding ensued. Candidus was Very Disappointed.) This would have happened in both timelines. —Leigha_

_Of course, Candidus Malfoy and Tom Riddle were also dorky high school boyfriends, because sometimes Tom is unknowingly adorable. —Lysandra_


	16. An Inconvenient Elf

"It's Black, isn't it?"

Lyra turned to see one of Professor Flitwick's pseudo-apprentices leaning in the doorway. The one who was covering her section, in fact. She didn't actually remember her name, either, some Ravenclaw who'd left school in Maïa's first year, one of the insufferable, snooty ones who thought she knew everything about everything because she'd _studied this, you know_ — as though reading a couple of papers on a topic meant she knew everything about it.

"I'm afraid you have me at a disadvantage," she said, in her best imitation of Dru's _politely disinterested, kindly fuck off _tone.

The older girl scowled, but she couldn't say something like _you know exactly who I am_ without admitting that she _also_ knew exactly who Lyra was and thus ruining her disingenuous opening. "Catherine Parr. We've met."

"Wait, really? Like the queen?"

Cathy couldn't seem to decide whether she ought to be annoyed that Lyra really hadn't known her name, or exasperated because she probably got that _all_ the time, at least from people who knew any pre-Statute history to speak of. Her parents probably thought they were funny. (Honestly, given the look on her face, Lyra agreed. That was hilarious.) "Yes, _really_. What exactly do you think you're doing? You're not an apprentice. You can't just _move in_. This is Éanna's office."

"Why do you ask questions you already know the answers to? I never claimed to be an apprentice, and who's going to stop me? Éanna doesn't mind." Éanna, in fact, _did_ mind — but on a scale of annoying shite she could do to him, moving her study into his office was _barely_ a three. And if she was around to annoy him, she would also be there to tell well-meaning twats like Cathy to bugger off. "What do you care? It's not _your_ office."

It _was_ only a couple of doors down from hers — the elves had apparently decided to just consolidate all the new assistant teaching staff in what used to be the Theory department, rather than attempt to renovate and/or restore _all_ the departments' auxiliary offices in the month or so they'd had between the announcement that everyone would be taking on apprentices and the beginning of the school year.

Ros had sounded rather annoyed about it, actually. Though that might have been because Lyra was questioning the decision in the first place. Or because Lyra had just spent twenty minutes arguing about whether it was _really necessary_ to move the study she'd set up for herself to use while time-turning. Yes, it _was_ in one of the wings they were opening up to host the extra judges and observers for the Tournament — including Queen Victoria, who was apparently going to come up in person for the opening ceremony — but it wasn't _that_ close to the residential areas of the wing, and it was warded, it wasn't like anyone (including the Queen) was going to just _wander in_, or something.

Lyra suspected Ros just didn't want to give her any excuse to be that close to anything resembling a diplomatic situation. Not that it would do any good, she was definitely still going to introduce herself — it would be rude _not_ to, since she _had_ invited them, and all. Actually, now that she thought of it, it was also possible that Ros was just inconveniencing Lyra because she knew Lyra was the one who'd created all this extra work for the elves. Yes, they _did_ like having work to do, but with so many important guests, they'd be hard-pressed to keep up the standards they prided themselves upon, from providing a wider range of food at meals to keeping the public areas of the school — pretty much the entire castle, outside of the dorms, the elf-spaces, and the professors' private rooms — spotless, despite the greater-than-usual number of undoubtedly untidy teenagers about.

Not that it had been intentional, but she _definitely_ couldn't admit _that_. House elves considered being unthoughtful and causing inconvenience for others to be among the vilest of all possible sins. Lyra was aware that she made a _terrible_ elf (no matter what Sirius might think — _bastard_), but that didn't mean she wanted to mortally offend them and risk their passive-aggressive wrath. Rudeness was fairly repaid with rudeness, and elves could make a _lot_ of inconvenience for a human who lived in their house. And Ros still hadn't entirely forgiven her for the babbling potion and/or giving everyone a cold prank. _Oops_.

But in any case, it wasn't as though Lyra was actually bothering Cathy, here. Or, well, she hadn't been, before she poked her nose in. Now she looked kind of uncomfortable, actually, eyes flicking over Lyra's shoulder to Éanna, who was still studiously ignoring them both in favour of some alchemy journal or other. "You can't just go around bullying and taking advantage of people just because..."

"Because?" she repeated (almost) innocently, a smirk tugging at her lips, too amused to pretend she had no idea what the older girl was hinting at. She was hardly the first person who had suggested that Éanna needed protecting or defending from Lyra. The first person had actually been Maïa, apparently concerned that Lyra being relatively accommodating of Éanna being Éanna was some sort of prelude to her driving the poor boy completely mad. Which she _could_, but there would really be no challenge in it. It was much more amusing to keep him around and watch him make everyone else uncomfortable just by existing. (Also, Snape had been _very_ clear about his intention to hold her to their agreement regarding the marking if Éanna decided he couldn't handle Hogwarts and the various twats who inhabited it and went home.)

"_You know_," the older girl hissed. Completely unnecessary, since Lyra was pretty sure Éanna wasn't listening, but also because it wasn't like Éanna didn't know he was a spaz, and that people inexplicably thought that meant he was incapable of taking care of himself, or at least hitting her with a stinging jinx whenever she was being absolutely insufferable.

"No, actually, I don't think I do. Generally it's considered sufficient to forbid bullying and taking advantage of people just for the sake of common human decency, but if you had something else in mind, feel free to elaborate. Bearing in mind that I haven't actually done anything particularly objectionable — like, I don't know, sticking my nose in to defend someone who doesn't want or need my help."

Cathy went a _very_ amusing shade of pink at that, but apparently couldn't bring herself to articulate her objection, opening and closing her mouth twice more, eyes flicking over to Éanna again. _Tee hee_.

After a few seconds, Lyra decided she probably wasn't going to actually say anything to defend her intrusion, and shut the door in her face, tossing a casual sound barrier at it to block out her shrill objections and furious knocking, and returned to re-arranging her books.

Yes, she decided, the elves were probably trying to inconvenience her. They _could_ have kept these in order, bringing them here from her former study, but they'd mixed them all up. She wasn't _entirely_ sure, elf magic being somewhat different than human magic, but she was _pretty _sure that would have taken more effort than just transporting them in the same position relative to each other. (Bugger. That probably meant she owed them an apology. Or at least some recognition of the extra work she'd made for them, and general flattery.)

To be fair, she hadn't actually needed to demand they move everything for her if they were going to kick her out of her study. She _could_ have moved them herself, and she didn't actually _need_ a study at all, now that she'd mastered shadow-walking. If she wanted to work somewhere without distractions, she could just go _home_. She hadn't actually _used_ the study in _months_, aside from occasionally popping in to fetch books she'd left there. She'd really just done it to be contrary.

Of course, it wasn't like she was planning on leaving, now that everything _had_ been moved. (Everything being a bookcase, an armchair, and a lap-desk. She had had a few end-tables situated around her chair, but she was pretty sure she could just levitate her books and papers by now — levitation charms weren't that much more difficult to maintain than illusions — or stick them in shadow-pockets to keep them at hand, so she'd let the elves put those back in storage.) She _had_ asked them to bring everything here for a reason, after all — it suited her for everyone else to consider her somewhat outside the usual House and year system, exempting her from its strict expectations for where she ought to be and what she ought to be doing at any given time. Associating herself with the apprentices and their odd, liminal position in the structure of authority within the school was almost as good a way to do that as becoming the Hogwarts Champion or convincing the firsties (not just the snakelings, she'd gotten to the other Houses, too) that she was a fourth-year prefect (however briefly, most of them had been corrected by now).

In fact, she would probably spend considerably more time here than she had in her old study, specifically for that reason. Of course, that meant she would have to ward the space properly — it wouldn't do for anyone to break in to vandalise the place or set some kind of trap for her. Contrary to popular belief, she _was_ aware exactly how many people she infuriated on a daily basis, and the Weasley twins were going to be _absolutely furious_ when she refused to tell them how to enter their names in the Goblet of Fire. (Because they wouldn't be able to get by whatever enchantments Dumbledore's used to check their age by having been born in Nineteen Fifty, not because they'd actually be any sort of competition in the selection, but she wouldn't exactly be able to tell them that.)

She'd just started outlining the basic scheme when an elf she didn't recognise popped into existence, right in front of her. Granted, she didn't recognise _all_ the elves, but she did know most of the ones who were routinely sent to interact with the humans of the school. Especially all the ones who spoke passable English.

"Please excuse Winky's interruption, Miss, but the Head Elf is wanting to speak with Miss, at her earliest convenience."

Lyra groaned. "What _now_?"

The elf's ears drooped at her disapproving tone, eyes falling to the floor, fingers playing with the edge of her tea-towel, but she didn't immediately fall into a paroxysm of apologies. "Elf Mistress Rose is not informing Winky of her business, Miss."

_And_ no offer to immediately inquire on Lyra's behalf. Either Winky had been informed that Lyra was not to be pandered to (unlikely, if the elves were trying to annoy her), or she had quite a lot more backbone than the average Hogwarts elf. Hogwarts elves, she'd noticed, tended to be distinctly more subservient than the Black elves. Though...that might actually have been the Black elves being unusually willful — she'd met elves from other Houses who were just as bad as the Hogwarts elves. Whatever. This one, at least, seemed reasonably confident. Maybe she was new, just hadn't been here long enough to get into the habit of bowing to the students.

"_What's your name?_" she asked, switching to Elvish to make it clear she meant her _real_ name.

The elf's eyes went _very_ wide in surprise before tears began to well in their corners (surprising Lyra nearly as much). She hid her face in her hands, sniffling piteously, though obviously trying not to.

"Lyra, you can't just go around bullying and taking advantage of people just because they're not human," Éanna noted, in a light tone suggesting he knew full well how silly that implication was. Apparently he _had _been listening.

Still, "_I didn't do anything!_" she protested, switching to Gaelic, just for the practice. They _were_ going to have representatives from Saoirse Ghaelach (and the muggle Irish government) here in a matter of weeks — seemed like as good a reason as any to start learning it. "_I just spoke her own language to her!_"

"_You speak Elvish?_"

"_Obviously, yes. I spoke Elvish before I spoke English_...though if you tell anyone, I'll deny it." She wasn't quite certain how that should be phrased, so she waited while Éanna repeated it for her before adding, "_I asked her what her name is_."

"_Miss speaks Elvish like Master Barty_," the elf said (in Elvish), making a valiant attempt to stop crying.

"Master...Barty _Crouch_?" Lyra couldn't think of any _other_ 'Barty's' who would obviously speak Elvish. The elf nodded. "What is Bartemius Crouch's house elf doing— Wait, no, I don't care." She _was_ mildly curious, but not enough to sit through what would doubtless be a tear-filled tale of tragedy, given that she had obviously been recently dismissed if she still thought of Crouch as her master. "You said Ros wants to talk to me?"

The elf nodded again, extending a hand toward her with one last sniffle. "Yes, Miss, Winky can be bringing Miss to her."

Yeah, no. Side-along elf 'popping' was somewhere between side-along apparation and riding in one of those thrice-cursed _automobiles_ on her list of least-favourite methods of transportation. "Not necessary. I can find her myself."

Crouch's elf's doubtful stare followed her as she stepped into the shadows, seeking out the Head Elf. It was a _bit_ more difficult to orient oneself toward an elf in their own home than it was finding a human — elves' magic tended to _blend in_, being so deeply connected to the wards — but it wasn't by any means impossible. Especially given how much practice Lyra had gotten over the summer, interpreting the different textures of magic in the Shadows and their relationship to the physical plane. Plus, Ros was almost always in the kitchens or the warrens, which narrowed down the search quite a lot. Or, well, it would have, if this wasn't one of the rare occasions that she _wasn't_. When Lyra finally stepped back out of the shadows — obviously some time had passed, though probably only a few minutes, since Winky was still apologising profusely to the Head Elf for returning without her — it was into one of the less-frequented courtyards. Ros was accompanied by several younger, stronger-looking elves and what was unmistakably...

"_Is that a _bad elf_?_"

It had to be, it was wearing one of those horrid, patterned neckties Sirius insisted some muggles actually wore (their one and only muggle shopping excursion had been highly entertaining, if not particularly productive), and a pair of shiny, equally muggle-looking shorts, bright gold, with mis-matched socks pulled up to its knees. All of this topped off by a tea cosy (actually pretty clever, that — it had built-in ear-holes) covered in pin-on buttons advertising various causes and groups, including _Save the Whales_, the World Health Organization, and something called "PeTA".

"_Yes._" Ros's distaste for the _bad elf _(an un-elf-like elf, deeply unwell) before her was obvious, just from the tone of that one word.

The _bad elf_ overcame its shock at hearing a human speak Elvish relatively quickly. "_Yes, I am a _free—" _Unattached_, nice way to put it. "—_elf, and proud of it!"_ he declared, straightening his shoulders and glaring defiantly at Ros. "_And I want to talk to the Master of Hogwarts!_"

"_You see my problem,_" Ros said, ignoring the elf's request.

"_It is for the Master to decide whether to _hire _a new elf, not _you_!_" He had to use the English word, because Elvish didn't really have the same concept of paying a worker for their labour.

"_I see your problem, but not why I'm here. I'm sure you can eject it from the Castle perfectly well without my assistance._"

"_Ejecting the bad elf from the grounds will not resolve the problem it presents,_" the Head Elf said darkly.

...Yes, that was true, he would just keep wandering around, looking for a new home — they invariably did, completely unfamiliar with any other lifestyle than that of the culture in which they were raised, with no other viable alternatives available. It wasn't as though there was a _community_ of 'free' elves they could join, because, well, an elf couldn't really _live_ without a home, or at least a master. _Survive_, yes, _maybe_, if they were somehow able to provide for themselves without using magic, but not _live_. It was almost _inevitable_ that they would resort to using magic, recklessly overestimate their own ability to control their power, and blow themselves up.

There _were_ places elves could go, if they were unfortunate enough to lose their Family. The vast majority of the Black elves, for example, had attached themselves to various public ward-schemes designed specifically to provide limits for elves, working on behalf of the community at large in the absence of an actual _family_. But the elves who had already taken sanctuary in such public warrens would not stand for the presence of a _bad elf_ any more than the Hogwarts elves wanted to deal with him.

See, there was a difference between elves like Winky, displaced by circumstance from their homes or dismissed by their masters for some unknown offense — such elves were often absolutely desperate to find a new place to belong, which _could _be difficult, especially if they had been dismissed, but not impossible — and elves like _this_.

Lyra was almost certain that _tweelks_, the parasite elves insisted caused this mania, were only metaphorical — an explanation for a well-known (and, to the elves, _tragic_) condition, characterised by the sudden, inexplicable desire for _freedom_ (as though the alliance between the elves and humans of a House was something other than mutually beneficial) and _distance_, lonely independence. It was often accompanied by a delusion of human superiority and disdain for the traditional House structure, and in the worst cases, by a strange emulation of customs the victims observed between humans — most often attempting to form contracts and hire themselves out as labour, which was far more exploitative in Lyra's view than simply doing one's part for one's Family. (According to Michael Cavan, some muggles even considered _that_ a form of slavery, ironically.) But it hardly mattered whether it was all in their heads, some psychosis or elf version of the Madness. Ideas could be as contagious as any parasite, and regardless of the cause it _was_ known to spread, a creeping sort of rot which could, in the worst cases, destroy the cohesion and cooperation of entire households if left unchecked.

No sane Head Elf would allow an elf like _this_ to take up residence in _their_ home. If he somehow managed to convince Dumbledore to hire him, and Dumbledore ordered Ros to allow the _bad elf_ to stay, she and all the other Hogwarts elves would shun him, maintaining as little contact with him as possible, in the hopes that his 'illness' would not spread to them.

Lyra didn't really see a problem with _bad elves_, theoretically speaking. She was herself a _bad elf_ according to Lil, the elf who had raised her. (Which was _just fucking fine_, because she wasn't really an elf at all, and unlike _actual_ _bad elves_, she had a place in the human world...even though they all knew she wasn't really _human_, either.) Personally, she was all for letting them go off and do whatever they liked, work for a few sickles a week — undoubtedly for some unscrupulous human, one who didn't want to invest in or submit to the sort of magic needed to bind an elf's magic properly, or of such weak character no sane elf would enter such a bond (because even a _bad elf_ wouldn't go work for a goblin) — suffering the horrors of House-less poverty until they self-destructed, if that was what they wanted — elves understood the value of money even less than Lyra did, 'free' elves nearly always ended up getting screwed negotiating employment contracts.

But even she would admit that she understood why the average elf found _bad elves_ terrifying and wanted nothing to do with them. They were _divisive elements_, and not even interesting ones (_good_ elves weren't reactive enough for the situation to get _interesting_), rejecting their culture and adopting all the worst human ideas. A threat to their very way of life, in much the same way the strictest traditionalists saw progressives — though Lyra was fairly certain that progressives weren't really that much of a threat. And they had just as much right to want nothing to do with a _bad elf_ as a _bad elf_ had to go off and do their own thing.

The _problem_ was, most _bad elves_ weren't so delusional that they wanted _absolutely nothing_ to do with other elves. Many considered their change of heart or psychosis or 'infection' to be a _revelation_, and in fact wanted to remain in their own homes, try to convince the others of the virtues of _freedom_, or, if they managed to obtain their freedom and were subsequently exiled by their kith and kin — who would mourn them as though they had died — sought out a new home alongside other elves. Absolutely none of whom were willing to have anything to do with _them_.

Coming to Hogwarts was actually a stroke of genius on this elf's part: Dumbledore almost certainly would _not_ understand why Ros was so set against welcoming this elf into her home — from the Headmaster's perspective, there was no difference between a _good_ elf and a _bad_ elf besides the aforementioned few sickles a week. He would be able to live alongside other elves, even be brought back into a system of ward-limits, without being forced to conform to the well-defined relationships of a Family. But the Hogwarts elves definitely wouldn't be allowing him to reach the Headmaster's office. And there were a _lot_ more of them.

"_What's your point?_"

"_We _will not _bring a bad elf into our home, but neither do we wish to send it away, leaving it to suffer._"

"_So, you want me to put it out of its misery?_" Because _she_ wasn't going to take it in, either. Cherri would have a fit.

The _bad elf_ gave a half-offended, half-fearful squeak. "_No, Mistress, I will leave, I will not be a bother, Mistress!_"

Ros glared it into silence. "_No, young Mistress Black, the elves of Hogwarts wish for you to find a place for this elf._"

"_What? No! The Black elves don't want it either! I don't even have to _ask_, I know Cherri will say no._"

"_Is the elf Cherri the Mistress of the House of Black? It was not she who made a promise to the elves of Hogwarts on behalf of her House. We do not ask that the House of Black take the bad elf as one of their own, only that you find a place for it._"

Translation: we don't care, it's your problem, now.

For a brief moment, Lyra actually considered breaking her promise, just telling Ros to go to hell. But, no, she had offered that favour with every intention of fulfilling it, whatever it might be. If she didn't follow through on it, Eris would be disappointed in her — gods tended to take the giving of one's word _very_ seriously — and reneging would _definitely_ result in worse consequences than the occasional disarrangement of her books. She groaned. "_Yes, fine, I will take the bad elf and find a place for it._"

A place far away from any of the Black properties, preferably somewhere no one who would tell Cherri would find out about it. Like, with the Grangers, maybe? Emma _would_ be taking their seat in the Wizengamot soon, it could be useful to have an elf to look out for her — Meda _had_ expressed concerns about potential assassination attempts — and it wouldn't take _that much_ work to adjust the wards on the muggle property to accommodate a single elf. Well, okay, she'd have to re-write the entire thing, it would probably take a week or two, but it was _doable_. Assuming she could convince Emma and Dan that it was a good idea to take on an elf. At least muggles wouldn't think it was _really fucking weird_ to _pay_ him. In fact, given Hermione's initial reaction to the very concept of house elves, that might actually be a selling point.

"_What if I don't want to go with _young Mistress Black_?_" the elf asked, glaring petulantly down (up) its long, pointed nose at her. "_I will not bind myself into servitude like the poor deluded elves you consider your _property_, human girl."_

She rolled her eyes. "_Then your _place _is going to be abandoned on the streets of Los Angeles to fend for yourself. I don't break my word, I _will _find a place for you. Which will_ not _be among the elves of House Black _— _who are _Family_, not _things to be owned_. I would advise you never to imply otherwise, but it would actually be for the best if you were never to meet any of them."_

"_Why? Do you have something to hide?"_

Okay, that suspicious glare was actually kind of funny. "_Do you really think the House of Black_ doesn't _have anything to hide? But my reason is this: the elves of the House of Black are just as ruthless as its humans. Our elf-mistress would not hesitate to eliminate the threat a bad elf poses to her House, not so soon after reviving it from the brink of destruction. Now, choose. Do you want to try your luck in muggle America, or do you want a job?"_

After a long moment of staring up at her, likely trying to weigh her sincerity, the elf capitulated. "Dobby wants a job, Miss."

"Lovely." She rolled her eyes, turning back to Ros. "_Satisfied, Elf-Mistress?_"

"_I will be once you get that thing off my lands."_ Her mostly disapproving, slightly fearful glare still fixed on the _bad elf_ was, Lyra thought, eerily similar to the one Petunia Dursley had worn when Lyra showed up on her doorstep. Really, it was uncanny.

"_Yes, yes, going! Come on, Dobby_," she demanded, already walking away. "_Can you pop?_"

"_Er...no. That is, not...safely_," he answered, scrambling to catch up.

She sighed. Not as though she hadn't expected as much. She wasn't about to try to drag a bloody _house elf_ through the Shadows or Apparation Space, and the abandoned properties in Knockturn, the only place she could reasonably stash the elf while she negotiated with the Grangers, didn't have a floo connection, so they'd need a broom...

Somehow, Lyra had a suspicion that this was only the beginning of the inconveniences _this _elf was going to cause her.

* * *

_So, queens._

_Catherine Parr was the last of Henry VIII's wives._

_Queen Victoria II is the current Queen of England, due to Sandra's disinclination to turn __**actual people**_ _into characters in fanfic. In her headcanon Harry Potter universe, the royal family suffered far more casualties in WWII, resulting in Victoria (a cousin of some degree to the actual, real world Queen) taking the throne. She's in her late forties at this point, a few years older than Bellatrix. Lyra was introduced to the royal family (tagging along with her Uncle Draco, the Black Cloak, on business) when she was eight or nine, and so has actually met her before (when she was still a princess, obviously). That didn't happen in this timeline, so Queen Victoria definitely wouldn't recognize her._

_(Victoria II was originally a character in a fic idea I had where Lily survived Halloween '81 and ended up leading a revolution against the Wizengamot/Ministry. Never ended up getting very far, but it is a fun idea, so things from it bleed around sometimes. —Lysandra)_

_Lyra is so definitely a house elf. Also, it's very likely that Dan would say _fuck no _to the idea of a house elf, so Dobby is probably going to end up with Dora. Works out well, because _she hasn't any clean mugs_. Ever. Plus, she's mostly out of the country, not like she's there to order him around. —Leigha_


	17. A Certain Reputation

The Wizengamot Hall was somewhere on the island of Anglesey — though, as happened with many magical sites, Emma Granger understood the question of its physical location was largely a theoretical one.

Anglesey had long been a centre of Celtic society, apparently, a religious site of some importance dating back centuries before Romans had ever set foot on the isles. With the collapse of the Empire, with Romano-British kingdoms, more traditionally-minded Celtic tribes, and Germanic peoples invading from the Continent all squabbling with each other, the mages of the isles sought to create some stabilising power to step into the vacuum Rome had left. In the Fifth Century, dozens of influential mages, petty kings and tribal chiefs and powerful merchants, had met on Anglesey, and between them formed a body that had eventually become today's Wizengamot.

The modern Hall was, according to legend, built on the very site the first Wizengamot had elected Merlin their first Chief Warlock, though it wasn't actually possible to walk there, anymore. Shortly after the Statute, the entire thing had been rebuilt — it'd been necessary, the old Hall had not made it through the war against Cromwell in one piece — complete with some of the most powerful, most thorough wards ever set anywhere in the world, against magical assault and non-magical detection. As a consequence, the Hall and the couple square miles it sat on had become..._unmoored_, in a way. It simply wasn't possible to get there through purely physical means, on foot or even by air. Magical travel was necessary, and only through the narrow means the wards allowed.

Emma knew the Blacks' rooms under the Hall, near the centre of the sprawling subterranean network of hallways and offices, was richly appointed in blacks and silvers, perhaps the single finest space Emma had ever been in. But she could hardly see any of it right now — the moment after leaving the floo, Emma had stumbled into a nearby chair, shaky and dizzy and flushed, she couldn't see straight enough to take in much of anything.

"Here," a voice said — Andromeda, she thought — as a smooth porcelain cup was pushed into her hand. Unthinkingly, Emma accepted it, brought it up to her lips to take a shaky sip.

Her vision instantly cleared, the worst of her unsteadiness and inexplicable feverishness vanishing. Emma sighed, took another sip, each one making her feel noticeably better. There was probably a potion of some kind in it. It mostly just tasted like black tea, a hint of honey — which was still slightly unfamiliar even after decades, British tea was different from what she'd grown up with — but there was a faint tang to it that wasn't quite right. According to Hermione, potions often tasted _very_ unpleasant, but she'd had a few so far and they'd all been fine. Maybe Ted took care to make his not completely vile, she didn't know.

Once she thought her voice would be mostly even, Emma said, "I really do hate the floo. Couldn't we get one of Lyra's portals in here?" That was how she'd gotten to Ancient House in the first place — once Lyra had realised Emma would be getting more involved, and would thus need to get around more easily, she'd set one up in the library without even asking for permission first. Not that Emma at all minded, she _much_ preferred her portals above most forms of magical transportation.

Even if the space-bending magic bedsheets in question had been cobbled together by a fourteen-year-old amateur. Magic was absurd to think about sometimes.

Somewhere behind her to her right, Sirius snorted. "I'd like to see Little Bella try to break the Wizengamot wards — even Old Snakeface never managed to crack them."

"I'm pretty sure gates don't work across the wardline here at all, because of the space-warping effects. Lyra is mad clever, but I don't think anyone's _that_ clever."

That voice, Emma _didn't_ recognise. She glanced up, finding herself in the little reception area just outside of Sirius's (Lord Black's) office — carpet for a floor and smooth tile for wall and ceiling, chairs and sofas, all in black and silver and red, a desk for an assistant, currently unused. Andromeda was leaning against the corner of the desk, teacup steaming in her hand; by the direction his voice had come from, Sirius was probably leaning in the doorway to his office, Emma couldn't see him from here. But they weren't alone, a guest sitting in a less than entirely proper slouch in a nearby armchair.

The girl was wearing formal robes in blue and white, silver glinting on her fingers and around her neck, hair shifting from auburn to strawberry and back again, like a dirty blonde tinted with red, drawn into narrow braids framing her face, the rest let free to tumble over her shoulders. Emma thought _girl_ because she couldn't be older than Hermione, the contrast between the finery she was wearing and the youth of her face almost obscene. It took a moment for Emma to place her — the awkward smirk was the biggest hint, really. "Lady Bones. I almost didn't recognise you."

Susan Bones, who before this summer Emma had known only by name (one of Hermione's classmates she occasionally studied with), twisted her lips into a scowl. "Yeah, I know." She shifted in her chair, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "Mum thought it was a good idea, just for appearances, you know, but I feel bloody weird."

By "Mum" Susan really meant her aunt, the same Amelia Bones who was Director of Law Enforcement at the moment — Susan's mother (and father) had died in the war, she'd been raised by Amelia and various grandmothers and cousins. Susan usually referred to her as her aunt in public, but she had a tendency to slip among their little alliance. (After one such slip she'd admitted, somewhat awkwardly, that she hadn't even known Amelia wasn't her real mother until she'd been six or so, it was hard to remember to use the "proper" term sometimes.) While Susan was _technically_ the Lady of their House, Amelia normally voted for the Bones seat, but she didn't think it appropriate to preside over the body _and_ vote in it, so Susan was sometimes brought in on such occasions, trials and things.

Emma had wondered why she hadn't voted their seat during the motion to expel Dumbledore over the summer, but it was better she hadn't in retrospect — she would have voted long before they'd flipped to kill it, it might have passed if the Boneses hadn't abstained.

For a moment, Emma considered saying something reassuring, but Susan really didn't need Emma mothering her, she was fine. Emma drained the rest of her tea, set the cup on her side table. "We should get going. I know we were cutting it close on purpose, there likely isn't much time left."

Andromeda flicked her wrist, shaking her sleeve up enough to see her watch. "There's a little time yet, but might as well. Bríd Ingham should be in by now, so we're good on the timing." Emma successfully managed to get to her feet, only slightly unsteady from the bloody floo trip, accepting the leather binder Andromeda had plucked off the desk. "The notes you asked for. Also, all the documentation relevant to your investiture is there, if some idiot decides to challenge you."

"Oh, I hope someone does." Sirius was indeed leaning against the doorframe outside his office (all of the Blacks had a tendency to sort of _pose_, wherever they happened to be, as though all the world truly were a stage), but unlike the three of them hadn't even bothered making himself properly presentable — he was barefoot, in jeans and a tee shirt, his hair a riotous mess of black curls. The first time she'd met him, she'd believed at a glance he and Lyra were closely related, the similarity was _very_ obvious. In fact, they were similar enough Sirius looked rather androgynous, face and hair almost _too_ pretty for a man his age. (She personally thought he was quite handsome, but she tried not to notice, since he _was_ technically her boss. Also, Dan would _never_ stop teasing her about it.) "It'd be tedious, yeah, but I'd love to see a Death Eater be eviscerated by a muggle on the Wizengamot floor, make my fucking day."

Emma gave him a cold smile. "Now, Sirius, you know I won't be doing anything so dramatic. The House of Black does have a certain reputation, you know — we can't be seen _publicly _eviscerating anyone, no matter how deserving."

Sirius cackled.

With a last few reassurances and wishes for good luck, Emma and Susan stepped out into the hallway, the door to the Black office clicking closed behind them. The passage was plain and dark and moodily lit, either way looking much the same to Emma — she'd been down here before, of course, but the lack of any useful landmarks always had her getting lost in short order. (She could probably find the offices for the Inghams and the Monroes, but that was about it.) Luckily, Susan led them off to the left with no sense of hesitation, so Emma just went along.

Not for the first time, she wondered if there actually _were_ useful landmarks to navigate with, but perceived through magic somehow. It _would_ explain how the mages always seemed to know where they were going. The thought was slightly irritating, but she didn't know if there was anything to be done about it.

"I like the outfit, by the way." There was a peculiar note on Susan's voice, something Emma couldn't quite read. (Too faint, occlumency was such a cheat.)

Emma felt a self-conscious smirk twitch at her lips. She and Andromeda had debated how she should present herself during her introduction to the Wizengamot, discussions on subtle social and psychological cues that had gone on for hours. In fact, Susan escorting her to the Hall was one of the results of those discussions. For one, the House of Bones was a name that held inestimable weight, carrying with it a reputation that was probably cleanest of all the leadership in their little alliance — the Boneses had almost always held something of a moral high ground among the Seventeen Founders, a stance that had only strengthened in the last century or so. (As Emma understood it, they'd _originally_ been the priesthood of a sort of state-sponsored religion, though their role had changed much since then some vestiges of moral authority remained.) For another, Andromeda had warned against Sirius's presence (or her own) at Emma's first appearance, not wanting to give the impression she was an empty puppet with no agency of her own. Anyone too closely tied to the Blacks, or any of their more magically powerful or ethically unscrupulous allies, would be problematic for the same reason. But she _should_ go with _someone_, to signal that she had support, that fucking with her, as some of the more stridently racist mages might want to, would be a _bad_ _idea_.

Walking in alongside the young Lady Bones — fondly regarded and well-connected, but unthreatening and inoffensive — had seemed the best option.

Discussions on how she should speak and dress had gone on for seemingly forever. They'd even brought in Bríd Ingham and Augusta Longbottom to consult with on the matter, which seemed absurd on the face of it...but it did make sense. The Blacks sending a "muggle" to speak for them in the Wizengamot was a matter of _enormous_ political consequence, it was very important they tailor the image she presented to suit their purposes. Besides educating her in the complicated etiquette of magical nobility, bits of culture and history it would be necessary for her to know, in the end they'd all decided it would be most useful for Emma to simply be herself. If somewhat sharper than she would normally be — the Blacks were _trying_ to be provocative, it simply wouldn't do for her to be _too_ polite.

Her dress, though, that was a different matter. They'd decided right away they shouldn't put her in formal robes — which Emma was grateful for, the things were quite uncomfortable. Her suggestion she simply wear the non-magical equivalent had also been rejected, though. They'd toyed with the idea of going in something rather more casual, but Andromeda and Bríd had put together something that was rather awkward, if somewhat entertaining.

The man widely considered to be the most successful Chief Warlock in history was one Henry Black, who'd held the title from the late Sixteenth Century until Frances Cromwell murdered him in the middle of the Seventeenth. He was one of the most highly-respected figures in magical British history, yes, but he was also rather controversial among much of the nobility. The Blacks had wallowed in scandal and madness in the century before him — according to Andromeda, due in part to the Covenant the family had not long before made with the Dark (an entity Lyra described as _all the antisocial impulses of humanity, more or less_) — and he'd almost single-handedly clawed his family back into respectability, but the methods he'd used to do so had been less than entirely conventional.

To put it plainly, Henry Black had been a blatant class traitor, and one of the most brilliant schemers the Wizengamot had ever seen. Instead of appealing directly to his peers, he'd instead appealed to the commons. In his early years, he'd hired craftsmen and contracted with merchants by the dozens, magical and not, treated them more than kindly and often paid them better than market value, steadily building relationships with communities his peers rarely bothered with. As Lord Black, he'd advocated for their interests, breaking contractual monopolies and pushing for broader personal freedoms. He'd quickly developed a reputation as not only one of the most sympathetic toward the common people, but also the most directly helpful, defending them from his peers in court and throwing gold at all sorts of efforts to alleviate their suffering.

(Even when he hadn't truly had the money to afford it — outsiders didn't realise this, but according to their own records the House of Black had been relatively cash-poor in those early years. Investments made had more than made up for it, but his actions would have seemed very financially reckless at the time.)

He developed close relationships not just with merchants and craftsmen, but farmers and unskilled labourers. And servants. _Everywhere_. And, slowly, he started asking his new friends to repay his kindness. Not with any serious sacrifice, no, he simply wanted..._information_, on the other people they worked for. That was all. And he would pay them well for it. And it might be risky, he knew, but if they got in trouble the House of Black would have their backs.

In the worst cases, if they had to, Henry was not above making the people who troubled them..._disappear_.

Slowly, over the course of decades, Henry had built what was essentially the largest intelligence network Europe had ever seen. His spies were undetectable, ordinary people going about their ordinary business, and they were _everywhere_. It was said, even before his ascension to Chief Warlock, that nothing was said between two people of any importance, anywhere in Europe, that Henry Black didn't eventually hear about. And he leveraged that intelligence and under-the-table pressure on his peers to get himself selected as Chief Warlock in the first place.

His allies in the Wizengamot and the many friends he'd made among the people had celebrated; his opponents and most of the English Parliament had looked on in silent dread.

There had been many Blacks at the time, Henry's cousins and children and grandchildren, but two stood out most prominently, still remembered in stories told today. Perhaps the most infamous was the metamorph Nymphadora Black, his granddaughter and, rumour had it, personal assassin. There had never been any _proof_ of that, but there had been quite a lot of whispering, a peculiar explosion in magical security...and Henry's enemies _had_ had a most interesting habit of mysteriously turning up dead. It didn't help that Nymphadora herself had apparently been intimidatingly powerful, and a bit creepy.

Supposedly, she was even still around — metamorphs simply couldn't die of old age, so that was certainly possible. According to Lyra, she'd been several of the Dark Lords and Ladies who'd taken over Carthage since Secrecy, but Emma didn't think there was any actual evidence of that.

The other was Nymphadora's mother, Henry's eldest daughter Bellatrix. (The ubiquitous use of the name by modern Blacks was in this Bellatrix's memory, in fact.) She'd been _somewhat_ controversial from the beginning — Henry had spent most of his first couple decades in exile from Britain, and Bellatrix had been the product of an illicit liaison with one of his classmates at Durmstrang, born out of wedlock when Henry had been fifteen or so. A couple years later, her mother was dead (murdered, presumably), and Henry had been forced to flee Scandinavia under suspicious circumstances, later settling in France. Bellatrix (and Henry, actually) had finished her education at Beauxbatons, and the two of them had left for Britain, on a mission to redeem their family and dominate their homeland.

Bellatrix had, essentially, been Henry's right-hand man. She'd been present for all of his above-the-table dealings, later taking over to manage the family's business in his stead, took over his seat in the Wizengamot when he'd been raised to Chief Warlock. When Henry or virtually anyone else in the House was challenged to an honour duel — which _had_ happened, magical nobles were silly and he'd stepped on _many_ toes — Bellatrix almost always stood as champion, for the first time when she'd been only fourteen. (Her name had been a _very_ fitting choice.) She'd been rather intimidating, yes, but she'd also been highly competent and unfailingly polite, perhaps the single most respectable Black of the time.

Though, this _was_ the Blacks they were talking about, that was a rather low bar. Particularly, she'd drawn some negative attention for dressing like a man, and there'd been a lot of talk about the fact that she'd never married, yet had multiple children. With how close she and Henry had been, there had even been whispers that Henry himself was the infamous Nymphadora's father — slander, Emma assumed, Bellatrix had been known to have several paramours who'd presumably been father to her various children, though she'd never admitted which to which. But, save for the more scandalous details about her personal life, there was little else negative to say about her, she'd been a _very_ good Lady Black.

Since taking over as Lord Black, Sirius had decided he wanted to portray himself as a modern day Henry — especially where appealing to the commons and irritating the rest of the nobility were concerned. (Sirius _did_ hate most of his peers rather a lot, for understandable reasons.) He was even talking about full-on adopting muggleborns and the destitute, something Henry had been (in)famous for in his own day. So, if Sirius was going to invoke Henry, they'd decided Emma should invoke Bellatrix.

Which included dressing for the part. Because of course it did.

Emma had been made up in something that was and was not quite dueling clothes — it was sort of the difference between fatigues and dress blues, as Emma understood it. (Oops, American terms, she didn't actually know the British ones off the top of her head...) That is, not something anyone would ever actually fight in, but something formal and vaguely militant-looking. Leather boots, trousers and curious tunic thing (magical cut, it was new to her) made of a peculiar silk-wool blend — stiffer than plain silk, but still showing a hint of its rich shimmer — in the black and red and silver of the House. And over that, a long, dramatic coat, complete with fucking _epauletts_ in silver and gold. It was just...

"You think _you_ feel weird, I feel damn ridiculous." Honestly, the first time she'd seen it in a mirror, she'd had the thought that she looked like a naval officer from the fucking Eighteenth Century, like she should be standing with a uselessly-elaborate dress sword dramatically raised yelling at her men to fire on pirates or something. She was only missing the silly feathered hat and the moustache. She knew they were going for a certain impression — and had gotten pretty close, she looked quite a lot like the portrait they had of the first Bellatrix, though a bit less elaborate and with the wrong hair colour — but still, she'd nearly made a couple jokes about rum-runners and loading the cannons, she just felt so silly.

(Dan had made a well-timed, _much_ more vulgar pun involving a different kind of load, and Emma hadn't been able to breathe from laughing.)

"It's not ridiculous," Susan insisted, sounding a bit surprised. "A bit old-fashioned, I guess, and not the sort of thing people usually wear to the Wizengamot — unless they're named Bríd Ingham, of course."

Emma blinked — the girl was right, this _was_ very similar to how Bríd usually dressed for Wizengamot meetings. Huh, she hadn't noticed that until now.

"I think it's pretty, actually. In a slightly scary, _I'm a hard bitch who doesn't have time for your stupid nonsense_ kind of way, but still, you know what I mean."

She felt her eyebrows track up her forehead. Yes, she knew _exactly_ what Susan meant. And she also had a feeling what that funny tone on her voice was now. Turning the shorter girl a teasing smirk, Emma drawled, "Careful now, Your Grace. You wouldn't want to make your girlfriend jealous, would you?"

Susan's face went _very_ red.

As part of an explanation on how sexual mores were different on the magical side, Hermione had mentioned that she'd walked in on Susan snogging a girl, that they'd been openly dating since halfway through third year, and nobody had a problem with this. (Emma blanked on the girl's name. Hannah, maybe? Hermione got on better with Susan, mentioned her more often, and Emma had never met her.) Even in the short time Emma had known her, she'd noticed that Susan was _very_ unsubtle about her orientation...unusually so for her age, Emma thought, but some people were just ahead of the curve like that. Susan had never been quite that direct with Emma before, and that hint on her voice...

Emma hoped one of Hermione's school friends didn't develop a crush on her. That would just be awkward.

After a few minutes wandering the subterranean hallways seemingly at random, they came to a shallow, slowly twisting staircase, ascended to the main floor flanked by a few aides and such — and, Emma assumed by the formal robes, a member of the Wizengamot, but she didn't recognise him by sight. They soon stepped into the great hall, a cavernous space with a high vaulted ceiling, cast in the brilliant white marble and glittering gold and lush purple velvet of the Wizengamot. The hall was occupied with a thin stream of people wending their way toward the central chamber, the last few stragglers along with assistants and such — it was relatively unusual for Emma _not_ to be accompanied by an assistant — and a clump of spectators and press standing idle or sitting on conjured chairs. The people who were allowed in the Wizengamot Hall while it was in session were rather few, she knew the sound was projected out here for everyone else.

Not for the first time, Emma noted the disparity between the size of the space that had been set aside for spectators and how much of it was actually occupied. And this was a big day — the Wizengamot still hadn't properly addressed the incident at the World Cup, and according to the official calendar Lady Longbottom had requested a block of time at the end of the meeting, purpose unspecified, it was no great leap to assume she intended to address the issue of the captured Death Eaters, many of whom were themselves members of the Wizengamot — so there should be more people hanging about than normal. If that wasn't yet another sign magical Britain had stagnated more than most were willing to admit, interest in their own ruling institutions at an all-time low — not only that, the _raw population_ had dropped steadily since the Statute, more precipitously the last century or so, very few in any position of power seemed to see that with the alarm they should.

All other considerations aside, when a civilisation started to see a significant decline _numerically_, something must be seriously, _seriously_ wrong. Unfortunately for magical Britain, their leaders were too bloody stupid to panic.

Through a set of tall double doors was the Wizengamot Hall itself, dozens of people inside bustling about in a chaotic, noisy mess. Though, the room sort of always looked a mess. It was a large circular amphitheatre, concentric rings of desks descending toward the floor at the centre, the structure of the Hall — the floors, the walls — were made of polished granite a brilliant white, tiles separated with thin bands of glittering gold, the ceiling appearing to not exist at all, an illusion of some kind reflecting the sky above. (Hermione said the Great Hall at Hogwarts had something similar, though this one was newer and of slightly better quality, without the artifacts along the rim Hermione had described.) Thankfully, it was a cloudy day — when Emma had been in here once before, the sun had been glaring off stone and metal, it'd been quite uncomfortable.

The unified colour theme, however, didn't extend to the many desks — those had all been designed by previous members, according to their own personal sense of aesthetics. There was no common material, stone and wood and ceramic used at random, all in mismatching colours, many including a banner hanging at the front displaying whatever symbols the house used — magical coats of arms tended to be rather archaic, much simpler than the more elaborate modern conventions Emma was more used to (the Blacks' was actually one of the more complex, and it really wasn't much) — all together forming a chaotic, clashing maelstrom of shape and colour that Emma felt was a bit too busy, garish.

Honestly, 'garish' was a word she thought fit mages a lot.

Susan marched down one of the narrow ramps, the space between desks small enough they had to go down single-file, shortly bringing them down to the floor at the centre. At only a glance, Emma noticed they'd finally gotten that seating rearrangement done. Since all the extent Ancient Houses — the direct inheritors of the Seventeen Founders, only five of which had survived to the modern day — were now allied, they'd decided to move their seats around the central ring so they were all adjacent. (Because the other twelve Founders still had seats on the Wizengamot, despite not existing anymore, which was very silly.) As was usually done, their allies had moved themselves to be behind them, curving around the Hall. Emma recognised the arms of a few houses in Ars Publica, arguably the most loyal faction in their alliance, directly behind them, a couple from the Allied Dark closer to the Ministry seats on one side, Common Fate trailing off toward the other side, the Light and Ars Brittania across the floor, curving around the opposite end of the Hall.

There were a couple odd things about this seating decision Emma couldn't quite parse. It was typical for opponents to arrange things to be as close to directly across from each other as they could manage — Ars Publica mirroring Ars Brittania made sense for that reason. However, the Light and Ars Brittania usually sat with the Ministry, but now they'd drifted around a bit, the Ministry right around the border between the Light and the Allied Dark. Directly across from the Ministry seats was Common Fate, traditionally the _most_ pro-Ministry faction, which made _no sense at all_. She suspected there was something subtle going on here, but she wasn't certain what it was.

"There you two are!" That was Bríd Ingham, leaning against her desk. (The Ingham seat was identifiable by the banner, a gold sun on a green background, which was coincidentally an Irish nationalist symbol on the non-magical side.) Bríd was nearly a decade younger than Emma — though, magical aging being what it was, she looked another decade younger, more early twenties than her actual mid-thirties — perhaps one of the least formal-looking people on the floor. Her short, dark hair was a ruffled mess, dressed for dueling — and not like Emma, the cut without the function, that leather was probably enchanted with the sort of protective spells people wore going into real battles. (It was still pretty, yes, accented with cloth dyed a deep green and ornamented with gold, but the material was a dead giveaway: silk and wool couldn't hold up combat-quality defensive enchantments, but leather and cotton could.) The only concession to the occasion was the cloak, skewed at a jaunty angle across her shoulders — Emma knew enough about magical British social convention to know she'd be considered underdressed for the Wizengamot without it.

Of course, Emma _also_ knew enough to realise she was wearing Irish nationalist colours. Right out in the open, _on the Wizengamot floor_, because she apparently didn't give a single shit. There _was_ significant overlap between the colours of House Ingham and Saoirse Ghaelach — a coincidence, they were simply drawing from the same cultural background — but the presence of the white fringe on her cloak made it damn obvious.

Hell, Emma wouldn't be surprised if the uniform of Saoirse's new militia, the same one that'd made its first appearance at the World Cup, had been consciously modeled on how Bríd dressed for Wizengamot meetings. It really wasn't a secret that the Inghams were Saoirse's wealthiest backers...or so she'd thought, anyway, nobody really seemed to notice she wasn't being at all subtle.

Bríd had pushed herself off from her desk, striding the few steps across the floor toward them, her cloak swishing dramatically around her. (Magical clothing really was quite silly.) "I thought you might be late. There's only a couple minutes left, you know."

"We got a little hung up, last minute things," Susan said (gracefully not alluding to Emma's problem with the floo). The girl shook hands with Bríd — or, not quite, doing the Celtic thing, gripping rather higher up the forearm — with a short string of words in Irish. The only part Emma recognised was Bríd's proper title, and that only because it happened to be the same one the non-magical Irish used for their prime minister.

Bríd laughed, answered whatever Susan had said with more Irish. (Emma should probably try to learn at least a little bit, with how Sirius had been sidling in their direction, but she was just so busy these days.) With that crooked, cocky smirk of hers, she moved for Emma's hand next — she made the conscious effort to grip her forearm the way she was supposed to, hopefully looked natural this time. "_A thuathaigh_."

"_A thaoisigh_." Emma hoped she'd pronounced that correctly, Irish was weird.

Bríd lips just twitched slightly, so must have been close enough to be getting one with. "And are you ready for your big moment?"

That was a question, wasn't it? A 'muggle' in the Wizengamot would be a hell of a scandal. It would undoubtedly draw attention to herself — and, more importantly, Hermione — and while a portion of it would be positive, the balance almost certainly wouldn't be. Hermione was less vulnerable, under the wards of Hogwarts and theoretically capable of defending herself magically, but Dan and herself were another matter.

Andromeda had seriously warned her to expect assassination attempts. The wards over their house had been built up a bit from Lyra's first pass at it, and Emma had on her person two emergency portkeys and a pocketful of potentially helpful potions. And they were still making improvements — there was further work to be done on the house, and Lyra had mentioned something about enchanting a shadow-beacon, so she could find her way to Emma in an emergency no matter the wards she might be under. Lyra had offered to move them to one of the already heavily-fortified Black properties, or assign a house elf to live with them and guard Emma's back, but Emma had promised Dan that getting involved in this whole _magical politics_ business wouldn't unduly affect their daily lives.

The whole point of appealing to the Blacks for assistance in dealing with the bloody magical paparazzi had been to _minimise_ that sort of thing, after all. And yet Emma was undeniably spending more days at Andromeda's offices than her own practice lately. While it wasn't as though their business was suffering, that certainly _was_ a major change for them. She hoped that, once she was caught up on the background and their alliances were established, she would have more time to devote to _her actual job_ — Lyra had assured her that very few Wizengamot representatives spent _all_ of their time dealing with politics, and Andromeda and Sirius were _more_ than capable of taking care of any day-to-day issues — but so far catching up with the learning curve only meant more time spent discussing policy and relationships between Houses and Ministry departments, rather than reading history. It was all _fascinating_, of course, but she couldn't help feeling a bit bad, letting herself get whisked away into the magical world much as Hermione had three years ago, so much of her life suddenly inexplicable to Dan.

And even among the things that _were_ explicable, she'd elected not to tell him quite a few. Including that Andromeda had suggested that assassination attempts were a legitimate concern. Perhaps it was unfair of her, but she didn't want this to become yet another point of contention between them. Because Dan was almost _certain_ to object to her forcing herself on a world which might well try to kill her for overstepping her place, and Emma had no intention of stopping. Everything she'd seen so far of Magical Britain argued that it was _not_ the sort of world she wanted her daughter to live in, and the only way that would change was if someone made an effort to change it. So she'd said no to the house elf, and to moving house entirely, accepting that there was an increased risk there, but judging it to be an acceptable one.

Though she _had_, however, challenged Lyra to come up with some way to adequately protect her _without_ relying on a bodyguard. It had not escaped her notice that her daughter's young girlfriend was, in Susan Bones's words, _mad clever_, nor that she routinely came up with projects to entertain herself which everyone around her, or at least those who _understood_ them, considered impossible. The magical bedsheets, for example. Emma wouldn't have trusted just _any_ fourteen-year-old to come up with a solution to this problem, but since Andromeda had gotten someone to give her wards a second look and after what Lyra had pulled at the World Cup — and learning a bit more about Bellatrix Lestrange and Ciardha Monroe — she felt _surprisingly_ confident about it. (No matter how surreal that fact was, when she stopped to think about it.)

She wasn't nearly so confident about the decision to take up the Black seat on the Wizengamot. Not because of the danger potentially involved — or not entirely, at least. Voting the Black seat, appearing in public as an official representative of the Family, would be tying her own fate — and, more importantly, her daughter's — inextricably with that of the House of Black, in a manner that couldn't be easily undone. One could argue she'd already done that, with the vassalage agreement she and Dan had signed over the summer, but that decision hadn't been difficult to make. Once Emma had sufficiently understood the contours of House Black law, and the greater legal system of magical Britain it existed within, it'd quickly become _very_ clear that the benefits of such an arrangement outweighed the burdens. Such might not have been the case if the current Lord were someone less permissive than Sirius, which meant it _might_ end up being an issue down the line, for Hermione or her children or grandchildren, but...

Well, she didn't expect that to be a problem, honestly. Any heirs Sirius might have would be raised by him, naturally, and she'd expect them to take a similar perspective on such things — Sirius was essentially starting an entirely new House Black, given his own beliefs and the fact that the Covenant would no longer influence any descendants he might have, the internal culture would be different going forward than the one Andromeda had grown up with. Lyra, given her...religious inclinations, would be equally permissive, should the title fall to her.

And, well, if _neither_ of them should have children, a possibility Emma honestly thought was quite likely, it was very possible _Hermione_ (or her children) would end up becoming Lady Black instead. She'd checked the house law — if no obvious heir to the title were available, it could be claimed by the family's vassals. The Blacks _did_ have other vassals, but they were estranged, future Grangers could theoretically be in a _very_ good position to inherit the entirety of the House of Black, all its titles and all its assets, at some point in the near future.

Emma hadn't explained this reasoning to anyone, of course. It wasn't truly a primary concern, and seemed a bit...mercenary. But she could admit to herself the possibility had factored into her decision to accept the offer.

She and Dan did still both have doubts, though they were stuck on different points. Dan was fixated on the more immediate issue of Hermione's relationship with Lyra, which, while Emma wasn't nearly as concerned as he was, she could at least sympathise with. Lyra was...a bit much — honestly, just being in a room with her could be _exhausting_ — and, knowing even just the vague outline of what her "mother" had done, she could see how Dan might be...concerned, with their daughter spending so much time with her, getting too close to her. He worried, and she could understand why.

She just didn't think it was necessary. Lyra was dangerous (she _had_ killed people at the World Cup), yes, but she was also simple — not complex, she meant. So long as she continued to find Hermione interesting — which, given the things Lyra found interesting, Hermione shouldn't have any difficulty maintaining her interest — Lyra would never become a danger to her. In fact, Emma felt with one hundred per cent certainty Lyra would literally kill people for Hermione. _Already_, and they'd barely known each other for a year now — the longer they associated, the firmer that association would become. No, Hermione wasn't in any danger from Lyra, she was confident of that.

People who troubled Hermione, on the other hand, she wasn't _nearly_ so confident Lyra wouldn't do anything awful to _them_. This was one of those sentiments Emma avoided admitting out loud, but she honestly considered that a benefit. Dan would be _horrified_, but if Lyra ended up flat-out murdering any super-powered racist assholes doing their best to make Hermione miserable, well, Emma wished her good luck.

Sometimes Dan forgot that Emma never had claimed to be a _good_ person. She'd think Dan would be used to a certain degree of ruthlessness, some of the things his mother said, honestly...

No, her concern was a more...political one. She was aware that, in tying their fortunes to the Blacks', Emma was essentially taking a political position on Hermione's behalf. Hermione might have no opinion on such matters at the moment, might not even know enough about the circumstances to _understand_ what the political ramifications would be, but she would almost certainly develop an opinion _eventually_. Emma had very little idea what Hermione's politics might be like, decades down the line. Sirius was rather more liberal than the vast majority of his peers, she couldn't imagine Hermione wouldn't side more with him than most anyone else, but...

Emma couldn't help the feeling that Hermione was going to end up rather more...radical, than the alliances Emma was forming right now could possibly support. This was going to be an argument eventually, she just knew it, but she didn't see that there was anything she could do about it right now.

Circumstances being what they were, the only honest answer she could give Bríd Ingham was a crooked smirk.

Even as Susan moved to say something, a heavy vibration broke across the air, the stone floor shivering under Emma's feet, like the skin of an enormous drum — _boom, boom, boom_. By the time the echo of the last tone faded, they'd all swept over to their seats, Emma sidling behind the heavy black granite of Sirius's house. She felt a bit ridiculous, flaring her silly long coat to sit on the bench properly...but with the cloaks mages wore all the time, it was probably just her. There was another brief moment of chaos, a last few stragglers dashing to seats, aides scrambling about, before the Chief Warlock stepped up to the lectern to Emma's left, a single raised hand bringing silence down over the Hall.

With some effort, Emma managed to keep a glare off her face — she was not impressed with Albus Dumbledore, and the more she learned the less she liked him.

For a few minutes, Emma waited, as the Wizengamot plodded through the typical opening comments, none of which was particularly interesting. Before anything else, the Wizengamot was a forum for the nobility — there were a number of matters, some economic but mostly social or cultural, that they felt the need to air out here, which Emma thought was mostly just tedious. A litany of statements on one matter or another, announcements of betrothals or births or deaths, various sorts of contracts, bits about artistic or public projects, blah blah. Every session opened with these things, going on for some minutes.

It really was no surprise Sirius had only had the patience to deal with the Wizengamot for a couple months.

"Your Excellency." Emma started as, behind the desk directly next to the Blacks', Ciara Monroe stood, then straightened — she didn't think Monroe had any other matters for the Wizengamot, this was it. "I note a matter of protocol, if I may."

Dumbledore had stiffened slightly as Monroe spoke, which wasn't particularly surprising, they'd been political opponents for decades now. "Of course, Your Grace. What notice have you for this council?"

"I believe we have an unfamiliar face among our number. The House of Black has put forth a new voice who has yet to be introduced, Your Excellency."

"Thank you, Your Grace, I do believe you are correct." At Dumbledore's acknowledgement, Monroe politely nodded, sank back into her seat. His eyes flicked the bare couple degrees over to Emma. "Who stands for the House of Black?"

With as much dignity as she could possibly manage while feeling so distractingly _silly_, Emma rose to her feet. Forcing her voice low and formal, she said, "Your Excellency, by the grace of my Lord Sirius, I do. I am Emma Mae, _an tuathach_ over the House of Granger, _aurraithe_ by the guarantee of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black." Emma felt a hint of the South on her own voice, as always happened when she was trying to be especially formal, but it probably didn't matter. She doubted pureblood mages would recognise a Georgian accent as more foreign than a London one anyway.

Well, if the _Prophet_ had managed anything over the summer, it was ensuring the members of the Wizengamot would recognise the name "Granger" — the uproar was instantaneous, and noisy as all hell. The only Granger they'd heard of _had_ famously knifed the Chief Warlock in the back only a couple months ago, after all.

There was a bit of procedure from there, though it required very little participation from Emma. Her _chargé_ from Sirius was floated (by Ciara) over to the head of Wizengamot Administration Services — something Tugwood, Emma had forgotten his first name — and it looked for a moment as though that would be that. But before Dumbledore could officially welcome her to their council and move on (no matter how very conflicted he looked), Lord Brown took the floor.

After the required pleasantries to the Chief Warlock, something in his voice sharp and hard, Brown said, "You will have to forgive me if I am mistaken, _Your Grace_." The sarcasm on his voice as he used that address for Emma was _very_ obvious. "But it occurs to me, the only British Granger whom I can think of off-hand is one Hermione Granger, a classmate of one of my nieces at Hogwarts."

Emma felt an eyebrow tick up her forehead. He must be referring to _Lavender_ Brown, one of the Gryffindor bullies Hermione had been dealing with for years now — calling them "classmates" was rather generous, she thought. "Hermione is my daughter, yes. I do not believe that is pertinent to the matter at hand, Your Grace."

"My niece is under the impression Hermione Granger is muggleborn."

"That would be because she is. What of it?"

Predictably, there was another uproar as the Lords of the Wizengamot who hadn't put that together already realised there was a _muggle_ among them (perish the thought). It took some effort for Emma to hold in a smirk at their over-the-top histrionics. It was just so _silly_. Honestly, it was putting Emma in mind of that time one of her cousins had shown up for Thanksgiving with a black boyfriend, which was frankly embarrassing — reminding her of her aunts was _not_ a flattering comparison anyone should hope to inspire.

Though it wasn't the first time pureblood mages had given her that feeling. The look of melodramatic sympathy Sirius had given her when she'd told him his mother's portrait reminded her very much of her own grandmother had been quite amusing.

Thankfully, the explosion didn't last too particularly long. There were plenty of people who were perfectly comfortable about the idea of a parent of a muggleborn in the Wizengamot, some even enthusiastic, mostly members of Common Fate and the Chief Warlock himself — ordinarily, a muggle coming to represent a formerly pureblood supremacist family would have Dumbledore tickled pink, but that it turned out to be the mother of the girl who'd almost single-handedly (if less than entirely intentionally) sabotaged his political career had him looking _very_ conflicted, if still supportive. There were a few people in the Allied Dark and the Light, Ars Brittania especially, who seemed less than pleased, but Malfoy had her people well in hand this time (or rather, their heirs and other proxies — the more outspokenly problematic Lords of the Allied Dark were currently in hospital or Ministry custody), and the more racist Lords of the Light were handily outnumbered even within their own faction.

There was still a lingering moment of doubt, until the WAS Tugwood stood from the Ministry seats to explain there _was_ precedent — before the imposition of Secrecy around the end of the Seventeenth Century, it hadn't been at all unusual for members of this council to send non-magical members of their families to speak for them, stretching all the way back to its earliest days. (Most were probably squibs, of course, but before the Statute the difference hadn't been recognised for most purposes.) The House of Black had even had non-magical representatives before, though not since the Fifteenth Century. While an entirely non-magical family couldn't be admitted to the Wizengamot by their _own_ right, a muggle _could_ be chosen by a magical family to speak for them, there was no rule against that.

It took a bit more bickering and grumbling, but before long all objections were dropped, the Chief Warlock formally welcomed her among them, and that was that.

Returning to a seat under the continued glaring from her peers, Emma fought to keep a smirk off her face.

The last matter of business was something of a surprise — so far as Emma knew, it hadn't been on the official calendar. (But that wasn't unusual, apparently the calendar was more a guide than a proper schedule.) Across the hall, Lord Ainsley took the floor, rising with all the dignity the ponderous old man could summon. "My honourable fellows, I speak now not for the Noble House of Ainsley, but as the Chancellor of the Order of Merlin."

A brief whisper shot across the Hall, people realising what this was about. The Order of Merlin had been charged to consider nominees in the aftermath of the World Cup Riot. (It was commonly believed the Wizengamot picked people to admit to the Order, but it was the Order themselves who nominated them and the Wizengamot confirmed them...though the Wizengamot could also recommend people to be nominated and the Order could admit people the Wizengamot rejected in certain circumstances, it was complicated.) There had been a bit of speculation in the papers over who exactly would be picked — the options had been severely narrowed from the off when someone from the Order pointed out that technically someone had to be a British national to be admitted. That had led to a minor diplomatic snafu involving a Saxon wizard who'd nearly been killed rescuing a few British children, the comments a few public figures had made on the scandal leading to _more_ scandals...and then there was the fact that if _anyone_ should be honoured for what they'd done that night, it was Cassie Lovegood, but the Order was mostly nobility, and most of the nobility _hated_ Cassie Lovegood, despite her _overwhelming_ popularity internationally, so nobody honestly thought she'd be picked, which had led to a whole _series_ of scandals as international observers and British figures bickered over it...

Yeah, the whole thing was ridiculous.

The list of names Lord Ainsley had brought for consideration was quite extensive, which was not really a surprise. With how slow the authorities had been to react, many private citizens had stepped up to fight despite being under no real obligation to, and each could theoretically be considered for honours. (Though, again, most were foreign nationals, and were therefore not even in the running.) But Emma was still somewhat taken aback by a few of the nominations for third-class membership Ainsley had. Sirius was nominated, that wasn't _too_ much of a shock, but she was completely blindsided when Ainsley listed, "Arthur Weasley and his sons, William, Charles, and Percival, for their assistance in the capture of an unknown number of dangerous criminals, and the rescue of the Roberts family."

Emma counted up the monetary grant that came with _four_ third-class admissions, converted the number into pounds, and then had to choke back a laugh. If someone was trying to bribe the Deputy Director for the Misuse of Muggle Artefacts, well, that was one _hell_ of a good effort, but they clearly didn't know Arthur Weasley at all.

(Sirius would be happy about that one, at least. He'd offered to help them out — ostensibly to repay them for taking care of Harry, but actually just because he had money and they didn't — but they'd been too proud to accept. Because _of course_ they were, Emma hadn't even met any of them yet at the time and she could have predicted that just from what little Hermione had told her.)

When Ainsley got to the second-class nominations, that's when things got _really_ interesting. He only had three to give out, as it was a rather greater honour, not like the third-class memberships that were seemingly thrown about like candy at times. The first he named was Lyra, which was not at all a surprise — she had essentially won the battle single-handedly, everybody had expected her to be named (though Lyra herself thought it would never happen). The second would have been a surprise in any other circumstance, but with the ICW breathing down their necks they really hadn't any other choice. Britain was already in a diplomatically complicated situation, refusing to admit Cassie Lovegood into the Order of Merlin out of spite would just make it worse for no good reason. (For that reason, Emma had been pretty confident they'd nominate her, despite what idiots had been saying in public.) The third, though, the third was controversial enough there was another storm of shouting and arguing in the Hall, perhaps even worse than when they'd freaked out over Emma being a muggle.

Ainsley named for admission into the Order of Merlin, second class, _Síomha Ní Ailbhe_.

Mutely watching the explosion going on around her, Emma could only wonder if the Order of Merlin had collectively _lost their fucking minds_. Síomha Ní Ailbhe was _literally_ in the _leadership_ of a _separatist militia!_ If they thought giving her a pretty title was going to endear Saoirse to the Wizengamot at all (or vice versa), these people were stupider than she'd thought...

All told, the routine business at the beginning of the session ended up going on _far_ longer than anyone had expected. They'd been in session for almost three hours before Augusta Longbottom, two seats to Emma's right, stood to address the council.

An address she had not discussed with the other members of their fledgling alliance (though, again, it hadn't been difficult to guess the topic), and one which she likely anticipated would torpedo the entire bloody thing. But Emma rather thought it was understandable — Narcissa and her husband had undeniably escaped justice at the end of the mages' civil war, paving the way for upward of two dozen influential members of the Wizengamot (or their heirs) and highly-placed Ministry employees to do the same. (Augusta had been extraordinarily reluctant to work with her even _before_ the riot at the World Cup.) Lucius Malfoy's trial in 1982 stood as a landmark case: the first instance of an Imperius Defense actually being 'proven' to the satisfaction of the governing body of, as far as Andromeda knew, _any_ modern magical nation, anywhere in the world.

See, an 'Imperius Defense' was, as Emma understood it, kind of like standing in front of a court and telling them, with bold-faced conviction, _the devil made me do it_.

The Imperius was a mind-control curse — the most dangerous curse, perhaps, that Emma had yet heard of. Andromeda, who had experienced it, described it as being made to _want _to do whatever the caster wanted one to do. Lyra, who had also experienced it, described it as literally the worst thing anyone had ever done to her, _ever_. (She was even including her sexual abuse by her father, apparently, though Emma did assume the two were linked.) The caster's will completely overwhelmed the victim's, taking away all agency on their part. And it left no magical traces which could be used as evidence that one was _not_ in control of oneself when one robbed a bank or raped someone or murdered someone in a fit of road-rage (or whatever the magical equivalent might be). Which was a _terrifying_ concept. She felt that the mages were quite right to deem its use upon another human being Unforgivable, worthy of a lifetime prison sentence — though preferably in a prison like Nurmengard which, unlike Azkaban, did _not_ use soul-sucking depression-inducing demons as guards.

But at some point in the past few centuries, some bright bulb had realised that if an Imperius victim had no agency, and there was no proof that they _hadn't_ been under the Imperius when they committed their crime, well, that was reasonable doubt right there, wasn't it. (Not that the Wizengamot required proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, but they _probably_ wouldn't convict someone who had legitimately been under someone else's control.) There were, however, a few _problems_ with such a plan.

First and foremost, the hypothetical Imperius Curse must have been cast by _someone_, and while it was _possible_ that it could be cast on an unsuspecting victim from behind or the like, it was also unlikely that said unsuspecting victim would have _no idea_ who cursed them. Apparently there was some sort of communication between caster and victim, which meant that it would be difficult to claim one hadn't recognised the caster while under the spell.

But, for the sake of argument, say the curse was cast by a perfect stranger, selecting a victim at random to carry out their crime. Leaving aside the fact that, if such was truly the case and the _caster_ had motive to commit the crime in question, the 'Imperiused' criminal ought _not_ to have had motive, or any connection at all to the victim of the crime, the range of spells a mage could cast while under the Imperius Curse was limited. Specifically, spells requiring a certain emotional state to cast were often inhibited — including the two _other_ Unforgivable curses (the Killing Curse and the Cruciatus Curse), which were the spells supposedly-Imperiused criminals most often claimed to have been forced to cast.

And in the unlikely event that an Imperius Defense managed to convince the Wizengamot that the 'victim' had no motive for their crime, and no idea who might have cursed them to commit it, and they hadn't used any emotionally-charged magic in committing their crime, they invariably overlooked the fact that _mages could read minds_.

Emma, personally, found this baffling. _She_ was certainly all too aware of that fact, but perhaps that was just because it stood out to her as being an especially terrifying and easy-to-exploit talent. It wasn't a particularly _common_ one, being able to do it without a specific spell, but that didn't really seem like any reason not to be a bit paranoid about it. Especially since, regardless of their innate ability to just _read your mind_, the Lords of the Wizengamot were _perfectly_ capable of demanding memories be submitted as evidence that the Imperius had been used on a person, to be inspected by forensic experts. Because, see, the spell might not leave any _magical _traces, but it wasn't exactly _subtle_ — people _knew_ when they were being affected by it, at least after the spell was lifted. It was possible to _erase_ memories, yes, but that _did_ leave traces which, if present, would at least circumstantially support the Imperius Defense.

In any case, while it _was_ theoretically possible to use the Imperius Curse to force someone else to commit a crime, and for it to be proven that the Imperius had indeed been used to that effect, anyone who could actually cast the curse in question would be aware of the degree of communication between caster and victim, that they would likely be recognised. Which meant that if someone used the Imperius to force someone else to commit a crime on their behalf, they would most likely _not_ allow that person to walk free afterward, when it was only too easy to force them to walk in front of a train instead.

Most people, she suspected, who used an Imperius Defense simply panicked, and seized on this as a potential way to escape culpability once they were captured, without thinking the thing through at all. According to Andromeda, before 1982, presenting an Imperius Defence seriously in an actual courtroom was practically unheard of — it really only worked in terrible novels, the sort with plot holes large enough to drive a truck through.

There weren't really that many mages who could cast it successfully. Even if the power requirement wasn't relatively high, it required a certain sort of personality, to dominate and subjugate the will of another person, especially one who resisted such control. Which was why, according to Andromeda, neither Lyra _nor Bellatrix_ was very good at it.

Narcissa, on the other hand, was perfectly capable of casting that particular curse.

(As was Andromeda, according to Sirius — horrifying curses which could earn one a lifetime sentence in prison were apparently the sort of thing the House of Black traditionally taught their children around age ten.)

When Narcissa had seen the writing on the wall, decided that she and her husband needed an exit strategy should Lord Voldemort fail — as had been, apparently, looking increasingly likely as early as 1980, at least to his closest followers — she hadn't panicked.

The Blacks' (and Andromeda's) working theory was that Narcissa had used some magic or other to change her appearance, _actually cast the Imperius_ on her husband, _multiple times_ (albeit likely with his consent), sent him off to commit atrocities alongside the other Death Eaters, just to form the appropriate sort of memories, and when the whole thing fell apart blamed everything on Bellatrix.

Lucius and Narcissa had stood before the Wizengamot and sold them a pack of lies, handed over a passel of disjointed, Imperius-tainted memories of various Death Eater raids as evidence, and Malfoy had been fully exonerated. Narcissa had never even been charged with anything, because she'd been scarcely twenty years old at the time, her short voting record portraying her as ignorantly conservative, little more than a sheltered, privileged child, unfamiliar with the ways of the world. She had put on a show of wide-eyed naïveté and tearful betrayal, and there had not been a single Lord or Lady who dared impugn her innocence.

Mostly because, as Andromeda drily observed, they found it only too easy to forget that adorable little Narcissa, blonde and soft-featured, soft-spoken (at least back then) and publicly deferent to her lord husband, was, in fact, a _Black_.

There was, of course, no proof of any of this, aside from Andromeda knowing Narcissa as only an older sister could. Neither she nor Bellatrix would have sold Narcissa out. (Emma couldn't even blame Andromeda for that — despite being rather estranged from her at the time, Narcissa _was_ still her sister, and imprisoning people with dementors was a crime against humanity, plain and simple.) And any Death Eater in a position to betray the gambit, provide _proof _that Lucius Malfoy had been an active, Marked Death Eater _long_ before the point implied in the memories he and Narcissa had fabricated, was also in a position to be sent to Azkaban for the remainder of their lives — should Lucius not testify that they, too, had been unwillingly Marked, and thereafter enslaved to the Dark Lord's will without any need to resort to the Imperius.

That was, in fact, the crux of Narcissa's hold over the Allied Dark: all of them owed their freedom, or that of close family, to her 1982 Hail Mary. (Not that any of the mages were terribly familiar with American football, but Emma couldn't think of a better term to encapsulate exactly _how_ absurd it was that such a ploy had succeeded.)

Which meant their idiotic decision to throw in with all the other British nationalists attacking _Michael fucking Cavan_ at the World Cup — demonstrating beyond any shadow of a doubt that the "former" "unwilling" Death Eaters she and Lucius had vouched for would _not_ have required any sort of dark magic coercion to participate in such activities fifteen years earlier — had put Narcissa in a _very_ delicate position.

Especially since Lucius was one of the rioters who had been captured, presumably on Narcissa's orders.

Lyra apparently had no inkling of the importance of that bit of intelligence, but it was (according to Andromeda's analysis) undoubtedly a key element of Narcissa's plan to salvage the situation. Not that she had discussed this with any of their alliance any more than Augusta had. No, she had dismissed their inquiries (supposedly) in the interest of not dragging the lot of them down with her — a stance likely calculated to win her points with the rest of them when their negotiations resumed in the wake of this "minor upset", as she was confident they would. She simply _would not_ have further implicated herself and her husband if she _didn't_ have a plan.

Andromeda was betting it had something to do with the _Marked, and thereafter enslaved to the Dark Lord's will_ part of the original defence, but exactly how Narcissa intended to leverage that claim into another illegitimate exoneration, even Andromeda could not guess. The Dark Lord, after all, had been effectively _dead _for the past thirteen years.

Still, she was as confident as Andromeda that the devious witch would manage to turn the situation to her advantage — and that of their alliance, dealing with the division within the ranks of the Allied Dark simultaneously. She had advised Emma not to second-guess herself. If Narcissa had wanted their help (regardless of their inclination to offer it or not), she would have negotiated to assure it at some point in the past six weeks. As she hadn't, it could be assumed her plan did not require any of their alliance to act in any way other than they were likely to without any intervention or machination on her part.

Which meant that Augusta Longbottom rising to address the assembly, calling for the immediate incarceration of the Lord and Lady Malfoy for perjury and fabrication of evidence in their 1982 trial, was...part of the plan. Supposedly.

And then...silence.

Not _total_ silence — a fearful, anxious susurration rose almost immediately as the delegates muttered between themselves, their secretaries and legal advisors shuffling papers, presumably briefing them on the relevant statutes, heads turning from the still-standing Longbottom to Malfoy, who still sat perfectly composed, the tiniest of concerned frowns creasing her forehead.

It was certainly not the uproar Emma might have expected, however.

The Chief Warlock seemed to be as shocked as any of them, one of his aides scuttling forward to pass him a note, before being waved away. "Lady Malfoy, would you care to address this accusation?"

"Certainly, Your Excellency." She rose from her seat with smooth grace, still entirely unruffled. "If I might have the floor...?"

A flash of annoyance crossed Dumbledore's face, but he yielded the stage more or less gracefully, retreating a step back to sink into a seat. Narcissa looked much smaller than he had, poised behind her desk behind and slightly above him to his right, and _concerned_, but not _worried_. Not anxious or fearful, unlike so many around her. Perhaps slightly offended.

"I assume you realise, Your Grace, that your accusation is a grave one indeed..."

"Only so grave as the crimes you and your Death Eater husband have committed against this august body and the people of Britain!"

"I would contend, Your Grace, that my lord husband and I have committed no crimes for which we have not already been absolved of responsibility. Surely the record of our charitable efforts and political initiatives over the course of the past decade attest to the sincerity of our rejection of the Dark Lord's principles and interests. Neither I nor my husband willingly supported Lord Voldemort's movement, a fact which we proved to this _august_ body in January of Nineteen Eighty-Two. I seem to recall Your Grace being struck dumb by the horror of the atrocities which my husband recounted, and appalled by the revelation that he had only done so initially under the thrall of the Imperius Curse." Between the slightest emphasis on that one word and the pointed reminder, Emma almost expected a smirk to form on the younger witch's lips, but she maintained her entirely serious demeanour.

Still, Augusta seemed to take offence, the tone of her return volley laced with more vitriol. "And now I am appalled by the revelation that your husband _did_ willingly participate in the same sort of activities the both of you so _convincingly_ condemned twelve years ago — he _and_ the vast majority of those Death Eaters _you_ vouched for in that trial! He _was_ apprehended attempting to eliminate the muggle Tánaiste and his retinue only weeks ago, was he not? in the midst of the riot at the World Cup!"

"He was, yes." Narcissa paused to allow the room its gasps and a few seconds of muttering. "In a corporeal state, by the grace of the Dark. On which note, I would like to take a moment to extend my deepest condolences to the families of those whose minds may have been irreparably damaged in the course of their own capture."

"And what about those families who suffered losses to the violence instigated by your husband and his ilk!" Augusta nearly shouted — this time accompanied by a louder collective grumbling from the other seats.

"Weren't exactly mourning _those_ losses, were you, Malfoy!" someone — Emma could hardly see _who_, there were enough people mumbling it was hard to pick it out of the crowd — interjected sharply.

"I have already extended my condolences to those families, personally and individually, Lord Diggory. As you well know. And I maintain that my husband and his associates, current and former, were _not _the instigators of the riot. They were, in fact, victims themselves. Five dead. Eight trapped in an incorporeal state long enough that they may have suffered permanent mental damage, a tragic state of affairs with which I know that you, Your Grace, _must_ sympathise."

Oh, now _that_ was a low blow, given the history between their Houses. Not Malfoy and Longbottom, but _Black_ and Longbottom — Bellatrix, Narcissa's older sister and, if Lyra and Andromeda were to be believed, the closest thing she'd had to a parental figure for much of her life, had tortured Augusta's son and daughter-in-law into a permanent state of near-catatonia, only days after the Dark Lord's fall. Augusta's right hand twitched as though to go for her wand, though she _did _restrain herself.

Narcissa ignored this, continuing as though she _hadn't_ just said something _incredibly_ inflammatory. "Eleven in Ministry holding at this very moment, my own husband among them, reputations damaged perhaps beyond repair, _through no fault of their own_."

Augusta scoffed loudly. "Are you _seriously_ going to attempt to convince us to release _Marked Death Eaters_ who were caught _red handed in—_ They _deserve _to rot in Azkaban, you—"

"No," Narcissa said firmly, cutting off the older witch before she could offer what would undoubtedly be a stinging insult.

"_No_?"

"No," Narcissa repeated. "You falsely anticipate my intent, Your Grace." Still with that same infuriatingly calm tone — _Emma_ was starting to find it annoying, and she wasn't _nearly_ so invested in the punishment of the apprehended Death Eaters as Augusta and her cohort. Or any of the mages, really.

On principle, yes, it was a terrible miscarriage of justice that they'd escaped prison in the first place, that they'd not only been released back into the general population but allowed to resume positions of power both in the Wizengamot and the Ministry. But Emma hadn't lost family to them the way Augusta had, and Amelia Bones, and, in fact, the _majority_ of the members of their fledgling coalition. (The major exception being the Inghams, of course, who thought the Death Eaters _and_ their most vehement enemies were all crazy people.)

One of Dan's greatest objections to Emma's involvement in the coalition (and Magical British politics in general) was the fact that she was rubbing elbows with people they _knew_ considered people like them less than human, who had been involved in a violent cult-like organisation known to _murder_ people like their daughter for the crime of having been born to non-magical parents, who had _fabricated evidence_ to escape punishment when they were finally brought to justice, buying their continued influence in the corruption-riddled ruling establishment of Magical Britain with a combination of obscene bribes and extensive blackmail.

Even those members of the coalition who _weren't_ Death Eaters (or married to them) were obviously willing to work with such people, and it could hardly be denied that those the Blacks were most closely connected to _were_ Death Eaters. And, well, it also couldn't be denied that the Blacks themselves were..._really_ not good people.

Even Andromeda, who had spent her entire career working on behalf of commoners and muggleborns, helping newcomers to Magical Britain navigate the political and legal situations they now found themselves in, was not-so-reluctantly impressed with the plan her sister had enacted at the end of the War. Sirius held a deep and abiding hatred for the majority of the Death Eaters, including Narcissa, but also the same pervasive attitude that Emma had encountered among the magical nobility thus far — that such issues ought to be dealt with between individuals and Houses, without involving the Department of Law Enforcement in any capacity. (Understandable, she supposed, given his experience with their idea of _justice_.) And Lyra, of course, saw no problem whatsoever with the atrocities her counterpart had committed in this universe, aside, perhaps, from the murder of the vast majority of their own family. (_Maybe_.)

Emma possessed the moral flexibility to recognise that the ethical and legal standards of her own society did _not_ apply to that of the mages, and to adjust her thinking accordingly — when in Rome, after all. Dan _didn't,_ but that was why she had made a concerted effort to insulate him from the details of her tentative new political allies' beliefs (and the Blacks in general). If the entire society had collectively decided to act as if the crimes committed in the war had all been adequately addressed, who was Emma to quibble? She would reserve judgment, give them — Narcissa and her Allied Dark — an opportunity to prove the position they now professed to hold. Her very presence in their midst served as a challenge to their racist notions, and one she was all too pleased to offer.

Assuming Narcissa didn't get herself murdered by Augusta Longbottom in the next ten seconds.

The Chief Warlock broke the staring contest which seemed to be developing between the two witches, Augusta positively _rigid_ with fury, while Narcissa maintained that little, slightly-concerned frown. Emma had to question that complete lack of reaction. It made the older witch look irrational and intemperate in comparison, yes, but at a certain point self-possessed crossed a line into slightly creepy, and with an issue as emotionally charged as this... "Lady Malfoy, would you care to..._elaborate_ on that response?"

Narcissa nodded. "Of course, Your Excellency. I do not suggest that the men captured at the World Cup Riot be released without charge. Quite the opposite. I..." Her frown grew more troubled, a hint of reluctance creeping into her tone, tempered by resolve. The relaxed tension in her posture was replaced by deliberate determination — bracing for impact — as she raised her voice, pitching it just _slightly_ lower, more serious. "I fear I must inform this body that my husband and the other men marked by the Dark Lord are again being influenced by the insidious corruption of that magic. As such, it would be unconscionable to propose they be released to resume their positions among this august body and the other governing institutions of our fair nation. We have, after all, a duty to—"

Okay, Emma took it back — that had landed perfectly. Even with Sirius's assurances that Narcissa was a cutthroat bitch who wouldn't know an honest emotion if it crawled up her arse and _died_, she could believe that the younger woman actually believed the statement she'd just made.

The rest of her words were drowned out by all the uproar which had not followed her initial statement. She stepped back, assuming a patient sort of poise, her presence seemingly shrinking as arguments raged around her. Two points seemed to be of equally great contention: whether the Dark Lord was still, somehow, alive; and whether his influence over the Marked men had ever been such that their actions at the World Cup might have been precipitated by it. There was also a question of what was to be done with the men were that the case, though that debate seemed, perhaps, a bit premature.

Dumbledore allowed the chaos to reign for several minutes, at least as long as the explosion over Síomha Ní Ailbhe having been proposed as a potential member of the Order of Merlin, but when it showed no sign of abating — in fact growing more heated, several members' wands directed at others, sparks flying both metaphorically _and_ literally — he took the floor again, attracting their collective attention with a twitch of his wand and a blast like a cannon.

"The question before the Wizengamot is this: what is to be done with the Death Eaters — or 'former' Death Eaters—" It was clear from his tone that he was no more convinced than Emma that they had joined the Dark Lord unwillingly, that he believed they still held some loyalty to that cause, if not to the man himself. "—who were captured in the wake of the World Cup Riot? We will hear arguments," he declared, staring down those few members who remained on their feet, "in an _orderly fashion_. Lord Peakes, you may have the floor."

It wasn't entirely clear how or why he had chosen Peakes to speak first, though as he began to lay out the (entirely noncommittal) position of his House and the solution he proposed (to reserve judgment for the moment, in favour of gathering more information), Emma began to suspect that it was because the man _droned_. By the time he retired from the floor—- from the glance she sneaked at her watch, only five minutes, though she would have sworn it was at _least_ half an hour — the more vehement members seemed to have regained some control over themselves. There was a short burst of conversation before Dumbledore called the next speaker to stand to make her case for her family's perspective on the matter.

As the arguments progressed, the issue crystalised. Did Lady Malfoy's claim merit further inquiry in the form of a proper trial for her husband (with the goal of determining whether the Death Eaters had taken part in the riot entirely of their own will, or due to some external influence)?

There _were_ other questions raised. If they _were_ still under some external influence, how was that influence best neutralised? If they were still under some external influence, did that mean the Dark Lord was still alive, or that he was returning to power? What would that mean for the reparation agreements they had all been working out for the past six weeks? If it was true, why had Lady Malfoy not mentioned this earlier? This was _not_ the first session convened since the riot, and she had not even raised the subject herself. If they were _not_ under some external influence, what did that mean for those who had been exonerated in 1982? What about for the Malfoys? Would their behaviour and contributions to society in the intervening years be considered mitigating factors? But all of these were dependent upon the primary question of whether they had or had not been influenced in the first place.

In Emma's mind, it was ridiculous that they were even having this discussion — _clearly_ the captured Death Eaters were entitled to a fair trial. (Not that Emma was particularly impressed with the mages' idea of due process, but a fair trial by their own standards, in any case.) She'd think that, so soon after Sirius's exoneration, even the idiots in the magical government would see the necessity of that. It was patently _absurd_ to suggest that a trial was unnecessary, no matter _how_ unlikely the claim sounded. Some of the Lords and Ladies of the Wizengamot, however, seemed to believe that a trial would result in an unfavourable outcome, from their perspective.

They couldn't actually _say_ as much, of course, but there was no other rational motivation for their comments, truly.

Some, like Augusta, had never believed the Imperius Defense. They were certain that the Malfoys had fabricated evidence back in '82, and would do so again in any future trial — that their duplicity was clear, and there was no point allowing them another chance to escape justice. Simply sentence them and have done with it. Others, Emma suspected, believed that if _this_ went to trial, they would essentially end up re-trying the case from '82 as well, but with, as at least two of the Light Lords had hinted, new evidence which had been revealed in the intervening years, resulting in convictions for crimes which had already been adjudicated and dismissed. (Double jeopardy was not, apparently, forbidden under Magical British law.)

"Very well," Dumbledore announced, as yet another Lord returned to his seat, and none of the others clamoured for the next word. "If we have heard all arguments...? Then let us put the question to vote: Shall the Death Eaters captured at the World Cup Riot be formally judged before the Wizengamot?"

"Your Excellency," Emma called, in the brief pause which followed that sentence. "The House of Black would like to put forth one final argument."

It _might_ have been her imagination, but she thought she saw a hint of trepidation on the man's ancient, stress-lined face. "By all means, Your Grace. The House of Black has the floor."

_Right, time to make an impression, then_, she thought, looking out over the dozens of occupied seats. Most were watching her with a challenging sort of air to them, no doubt wondering what the hell she thought she was doing — or whether she was prepared to speak on behalf of the Blacks, given that it was her first session, and there hadn't been a muggle in the Wizengamot in _centuries_. Narcissa, behind the Malfoys' ornately carved desk, its white wood inlaid with silver and emeralds, fixed her with a narrow-eyed, speculative expression. Little Susan Bones gave her a covert thumbs-up. Augusta didn't take her eyes off Narcissa, still looked, in Emma's opinion, as though she'd like to strangle her erstwhile ally with her bare hands. Bríd and Ciara were exchanging a series of looks and minute hand-gestures which said as clearly as words that _this wasn't planned_, and _what the hell is she doing?_

Because they had agreed that she would keep a relatively low profile at this first meeting — that they would assume a sort of holding pattern, give Narcissa time to get her people in line (or not); the rest of the Wizengamot time to come to terms with Emma's appointment; and Emma a chance to get a feel for the positions of the other factions within the assembly. It had been assumed by all of them, Emma included, that she would simply observe the proceedings.

But Narcissa's gambit had taken a path they had not anticipated — or, that Emma had not anticipated, at least — and the right of all prisoners, even those quite reasonably believed to be Death Eaters, to a public trial, or at least one before their peers, was an issue on which the House of Black couldn't _not_ weigh in. It wasn't _quite_ the same circumstance as Sirius's, of course — the rioters had been caught red-handed, their wands providing evidence of their recently-cast spells, with dozens of eye-witnesses willing to testify, none of whom were muggles who had been routinely obliviated before they could be properly questioned — but while their _guilt_ was not in question, their _culpability_ still was, which meant a trial was necessary. Regardless of how many Houses feared the potential outcomes of such a trial.

"Thank you, Your Excellency. I was warned that this esteemed assembly could at times be, shall we say...inflexible, in defending the rights and positions of their Houses, and _overly prudent_, in considering new ideas. I was _not_ warned to expect such openly asinine _cowardice_ from my fellow delegates."

She paused to allow the expected uproar to commence, and the Chief Warlock to shout them down. _She_ certainly wasn't about to attempt to do so — they had magic to amplify their voices, she doubted they would even hear her, regardless of the acoustics of the hall and how well she projected. _Imagine_ being _insulted_ by a _muggle_ on the bloody _Wizengamot floor_! How _dare_ she! (To be unfailingly polite and accommodating would _hardly_ be in keeping with the traditions of the House of Black, that was how.) When the hubbub subsided, she gave it a few more seconds, just for effect.

"But how else ought I to interpret the suggestion in this body to dismiss the claims of _any_ of its members to innocence against the crimes of which they are accused — explicitly denying them those rights to their own defense this body purports to recognize?" Not, strictly speaking, an accurate characterisation of the situation, but close enough. "I am well aware that my people are not considered, among Britons, to have much in the way of _principles_, but even _Americans_ hold the right to a trial before one's peers to be an inalienable right."

Another moment of outrage, and not surprisingly: the reputation of the Americas in _most_ of the ICW states was, apparently, _even worse_ on the magical side than the non-magical side, largely because the American mages (especially the _Native_ American mages) thought the Statute of Secrecy was complete bullshit — a perspective which Emma could not bring herself to disagree with — and because certain magical states in the Americas were _far_ less restrictive regarding the practice of various magics considered "dark" by the majority of Europe. Granted, Emma did not condone radical experimentation on humans with no ethical oversight to speak of (the idea of Miskatonic University having an Internal Review Board was laughable, apparently), but it certainly wouldn't hurt to warn the peers of the Wizengamot that she was likely to be more..._open-minded_, than they might expect.

Though, that too, was in keeping with the reputation of the House of Black.

"This body only months ago concluded, in its review of the sentencing of my Lord Sirius, that he was, in fact, wrongly held from November of Nineteen Eighty-One until he saw fit to rectify the situation himself in July of Nineteen Ninety-Three. This conclusion was reached in spite of evidence which _seemed_, _superficially_, to indicate his guilt, back in Nineteen Eighty-One. In light of those facts, that _anyone_ might suggest it 'unnecessary' to provide an opportunity for the accused to argue in their defense, in even the most damning of circumstances, is frankly absurd.

"I can only assume that such shortsighted suggestions must be motivated by some fear that the truth will not reflect favourably on one's position — unless, of course, it is a desire for vengeance. But I could hardly suggest that any of those who have argued today against a fair trial for the captured rioters have any desire to dissolve once and for all what remains of the already fragile truce between certain factions of this body. Surely it would be beyond the bounds of reason for any faction, at this juncture, to wish to resume open hostilities."

How _dare_ a _muggle_ have the _temerity_ to comment on a war which had shaped so much of Magical Britain's recent history — to point out exactly how close they were, at this moment, to reigniting a conflict which would, if the demographic trends Emma had noted were any indication, spell the end of their society entirely! The _audacity_!

"Regardless, however, of the moral imperative to _try_ presumed criminals, or the personal and political motivations one might or might not have to preserve a degree of peace within the society we profess to lead—" How _dare_ this muggle refer to herself as _one of them_, despite being recognised as a member of their assembly _only hours ago_! "_Regardless_ of those motivations," she repeated, raising her voice slightly over the muttering, "there is another point which has yet to be addressed." One which she was, quite frankly, surprised Narcissa hadn't offered — though it would, perhaps, seem disingenuous, coming from her. "If Lady Malfoy's claim holds true, if the Dark Lord this nation ostensibly opposed throughout the Sixties and Seventies is, in fact, _not_ as dead as is widely presumed, but in fact affects our society through some more subtle influence to this day, you owe it to yourselves and our people as a whole to _eliminate _that influence." She let them consider that for a beat before pressing on. "Moreover, it may be wise to consider the potential implications of Lady Malfoy's actions here today.

"Surely if this Dark Lord persists, it cannot be in his interests to draw attention to any such continued influence. Regardless of any position members of her House may have taken in the past, to undermine any attempt by the Dark Lord to further influence the state of Magical Britain through his Marked servants, can only be interpreted as a genuine effort to thwart him, and one which will most certainly be punished severely should he somehow manage to return to power."

More muttering — had they truly not realised... But no, some of the people of the Allied Dark were looking distinctly uncomfortable. The young man at the Parkinson desk seemed especially furious — he must have been hoping that no one would call attention to the fact that they were trapped. If they voted _for_ a trial, they were stating that they believed the Dark Lord was influencing their fathers and brothers and cousins, calling him out and doubling down on their families' denouncement of him in '82. But if they voted _against_ a trial, that was tantamount to admitting that they felt their families would _not_ be exonerated, thus implicating themselves and all of their allies for their actions in the War.

"As such," she concluded, (trying _very_ hard not to smirk, as she caught Narcissa's tiny, cat-like grin), "I believe it safe to say that the House of Black is in full agreement with the House of Malfoy on this issue. We vote to try the captured Death Eaters."

She was well aware that it was presumptive of her to offer her vote before the Chief Warlock called for it — he would almost certainly ask for it again, both for the sake of formality and as a sort of rebuke for her usurping that responsibility — but it was hardly forbidden for a House to throw its weight so firmly behind one side of an issue or another. It wasn't _Emma's_ fault that the House of Black was first on the rolls, nor had she intentionally waited until the vote was called to address the assembly — she had simply been waiting to see whether her points would be addressed by anyone else. Which they had not.

Ending by offering her vote, though, did effectively give her the last word, as no one attempted to rebut her points. After a few more moments' discussion — Susan, seated between Emma and the rather irate Augusta Longbottom, leaned over to whisper, "I thought you said you wouldn't be publicly eviscerating _anyone_, let alone _everyone_!" to which Emma _had_ to respond, "The House of Black does have a certain reputation, you know." — they were called to order again.

The vote passed, of course. Emma would have been shocked if it hadn't, even without her throwing her two cents in, but she'd still felt she ought to make their voice heard, so. The Allied Dark, she noticed, voted unanimously to go to trial, which she fancied _might_ have had something to do with her pointing out their quandry to the less politically-minded representatives. On the whole, she thought, a good first impression.

By which, of course, she meant she'd probably pissed off just about everyone other than Narcissa and Susan. But the House of Black _did_ have a certain reputation to maintain.

* * *

_The Gaels use a few titles of their own for things. Explaining a few of them here because they showed up._

[a thaoisigh] — _This is the vocative form of _taoiseach_, literally meaning "leader". (In irl Ireland, it's also what they call their prime minister.) Modern Gaels mostly use it in the literal sense, for leaders just in general, but it's also the official title for the heads of noble houses (plus the Caoimhes, who the British don't consider nobility). Bríd technically isn't the head of her family, but while she's speaking for them in the Wizengamot she's treated as though she is._

[a thuathaigh] — _This is the vocative form of _tuathach_, which is an old term for a tribal chieftain. (It's derived from _tuath_, which literally means tribe or people.) It's the official title for the heads of common houses, but also crops up time to time for leaders of, like, social groups and such, everything from artistic movements to book clubs to political parties. As an example, people in Saoirse would call Síomha (among others) this, though it's not an official title in her case._

[tánaiste] — _It was briefly mentioned in a previous chapter that the title the irl Irish use for their deputy prime minister (Michael Cavan, in this fic) is also used on the magical side, so might as well explain that. Literally, the word means "second", and is thus used in any case of a second-in-command, or an heir, that sort of thing. It's also used for a position in local government that's sort of almost equivalent to a mayor. This one could theoretically be used for Lyra, since she's the only possible heir to Sirius, and makes a point of speaking for the family now and again, as a proper tánaiste should._

[aurraithe] — _This is from a term for freemen in old feudal Ireland. (In modern Irish it's _urraí_, but I kept the old _aurraid _for a more archaic feel, then partially modernised the spelling.) Here it's used to refer to a newer house organised under the protection of more established one. Emma is consciously using the Irish term instead of an English or Welsh one for subtle politics reasons._

_It's possible I think about this shit way too hard. —Lysandra_

_So, apparently the British Army also has dress blues. And like, six other variously formal uniforms. (The things you learn writing fanfic continue to amuse me.) Emma just doesn't know this. (By which she means **I** didn't know. —Lysandra)_

_I thought I would have more notes, but I think Emma said everything that needed saying, so. —Leigha _


	18. Your Move, Alexander

"Black!"

Lyra turned from her conversation with Maïa to see Narcissa's poncy little brat hovering near the top of the stairway the Slytherins normally used to reach the Great Hall. She glared at him as she changed course, causing him to flinch amusingly. Pretty much the only amusing thing he'd done lately — Lyra was beginning to think she oughtn't have told the Slytherin prefects to make sure everyone knew Rachel was under her protection, because her plan to bait the twats she owed some form of retaliation for that little kidnapping incident last year into doing something she could reasonably use as an excuse to kick their arses and/or prank them into oblivion wasn't going very well. There had been an almost suspicious lack of activity on their part.

Though that could, Lyra supposed, be due to _Cassie_ being terrifying, not just Lyra. She had made it _very clear_ that she would not tolerate any bullying of the younger students. She hadn't actually _done _anything to anyone as far as Lyra knew, and she was pretty sure that any threat of violence against bullies was, in fact, a bluff — any potential bullies would, after all, also be "children". According to Cassie's rather silly definition, _Lyra_ was a child, which she was pretty sure meant literally everyone else was _also_ a child, given that she was undoubtedly the most competent student in the school. In the event that the twats ever _did_ make a move, and Lyra _did_ have an opportunity to exercise vengeance upon them, she was kind of counting on that fact to keep Cassie from squashing her like a particularly annoying acromantula.

But that was completely irrelevant, given that they would have to actually _do_ something first, which was looking annoyingly unlikely. Clearly she needed a new plan.

"What is it, Cousin?" She _was _legitimately curious what he might want. Since they'd come back to school, he'd tried to avoid her as much as possible. Not really effectively since they were in the same Potions _and_ Defence lessons now, but it was still obvious he was trying (even to _Lyra_) — especially when he spotted her in the corridors and there were no other Slytherins around to see him abruptly remember that he had something urgent to take care of in the opposite direction.

"I need to talk to you," he hissed, eyes flicking over to Maïa. "_Privately_."

"Lead on, then." She gestured toward the stairwell for him to find a room for them, linking her arm through Maïa's as soon as he turned his back, even as the silly girl went to excuse herself.

"Er, Lyra..."

"If you come with us, I won't have to tell you everything later," she pointed out, skipping down the stairs and dragging her explicitly disinvited girlfriend along with her.

Draco had stopped in the very first empty classroom, obviously anxious to get whatever this was done with. "What is— I said _privately_, Black!"

"You tell him." The whole point of Maïa tagging along was that Lyra _wouldn't_ have to repeat things. And besides, she had privacy palings to cast, one or two of them she still had to think about. (Seriously, she'd cast these at _least_ ten-thousand times in the past...however long she'd subjectively been here, now. It was bloody ridiculous.)

By the time she finished, Draco had stopped complaining, was just standing there glaring impotently at Maïa, playing nervously with what appeared to be a letter. Probably from his mum. Though why she hadn't just written to Lyra directly... She _did_ know how tedious Lyra found her spawn, it was really better for everyone if she wasn't forced to spend too much time around him. If she killed him, even out of sheer frustration, Bella would be even more annoyed with her than she had been about the shadow-trap incident. She might actually come to Hogwarts to hex Lyra to seven hells if she made Cissy cry.

"Well?"

He held out the scrolled letter with a petulant pout. "Mother said to ask you about this. It comes out tomorrow, so there's not time to send an owl back to her."

"Why don't you have a— Oh, wait, if you had a mirror, you could go whining to her without..." She trailed off as she skimmed through what appeared to be a copy of an article formatted for the _Prophet_. "Circe's tits, Cissy..." She grinned at Maïa, passing it over. "And here I thought my dear auntie disapproved of my plans for Mister Riddle."

"'_Malfoy Pulls the Serpent's Fangs'_? Who wrote— _Skeeter_? Narcissa Malfoy gave an exclusive interview to _Rita Skeeter_? The _gossip columnist_?"

"She only does gossip when there's nothing juicier to go after."

It didn't take very long at all for Draco to get annoyed with Lyra and Maïa ignoring him. "Hey! Why did Mother want me to know about this before it came out?"

"I don't know, did you _read_ it? Here, give it back, Maïa."

After undoubtedly several entire minutes of debate, the Wizengamot had voted almost unanimously to hold Lucius's trial in a closed session (or rather, a series of closed sessions, it had taken the better part of a week) — presumably because they hadn't wanted to cause a panic as the public realised Cissy's argument hinged on the Dark Lord still being alive and potentially on the cusp of making a comeback, and having influence over every person who bore his Mark. The sparks cast by that claim in the midst of her trial plea had been stomped out rather quickly — only the _Prophet_ and the _Herald_ had had reporters in the public observation area, and they were..._easily influenced_. Still, no one had wanted to risk allowing her to openly present evidence which might convince the general public even if it didn't convince the Lords and Ladies.

From what little Emma had told Lyra, it had been a shit-show when the _Wizengamot_ finally accepted that undead-Riddle was...not dead. There had been a bloody panic, enough some of the stupider members of Ars Brittania had actually, seriously suggested electing a _Lord Protector_, which was just...ridiculous. (Funny as hell, honestly, but completely absurd. Riddle had _never_ posed that substantial a threat. Nor had Bella, frankly — being at war was _way_ more fun than _actually taking over_.) And the Wizengamot was made up of a load of old buggers who'd rather sit around and talk at each other than actually _do_ anything. If they'd been broadcasting the trial on the wireless, there might have been riots in Charing.

There might _still_ be riots in Charing, when this hit the streets. Well, assuming people weren't curious enough about the title to read through the end, because Cissy _had_ kind of undermined the threat (Undead) Dark Lord Riddle posed, even if mostly incidentally.

The trial had been derailed for almost twelve hours before Cissy and Emma managed to steer them back to the issue at hand. Because the crux of Cissy's strategy, from just a quick glance at the resolutions which had been passed before the trial concluded, hadn't been to convince people that Dumbledore wasn't just a paranoid old goat with his claims that the Dark Lord was still out there somewhere. It had been to fucking _neuter_ every surviving Death Eater in her bloc.

"Of course I read it!"

"And you don't see how forcing every one of the Marked Death Eaters to recuse themselves from all positions of power and submit, in effect, to house arrest, _for the foreseeable future_, _might_ have some political implications here at Hogwarts?"

"Erm..."

"Honestly, you are such an idiot! Even _Lucius _is better at politics than this! _Lucius_!"

Though Lucy's value to Narcissa wasn't really in his political acumen, but his ability to sell sand to an Egyptian — to convince a majority of the Wizengamot that he had been compelled to go out into the riot, _as though in a dream, my limbs moving of their own accord, driven by _hate _and _rage _to– to do the sort of things, to cast the sort of spells I have not cast in thirteen years. It was...unsettling, my Lords. _Deeply _unsettling_. And that he had only managed to resist the urge to use lethal curses through a _supreme effort of will_.

His testimony had been (according to the article) corroborated by Snape, who claimed those sufficiently well-practised in occlumency likely would have been able to resist such a compulsion. He 'speculated' that the resistance of the others, those who _had_ caved to the fictional compulsions, had been weakened by the consumption of alcohol in the wake of the Irish World Cup win (and potentially other, less-legal substances, though that was _Skeeter_ 'speculating'). Lucius, celebrating privately with his wife and son, had been sober enough to at least partially resist. (Though of course, that was only _speculation_, because Snape was very good at _technically _not perjuring himself.) And _Snape's_ testimony that the Mark _could_ be used to influence the minds of those branded with it in such a way — and that Snape himself wouldn't necessarily have been impacted _at all_, given that he was a natural legilimens and thus especially resistant to such things — was corroborated by an expert from the Department of Mysteries; John McKinnon, St. Mungo's Senior Mind Healer; _and _a Gringotts Cursebreaker.

Then had come the presentation of a series of photographs of Lucius's Dark Mark, demonstrating the degree to which it had darkened even in the past six weeks — with the Department of Mysteries and the Cursebreaker again corroborating Narcissa's claim that this was indicative of the Dark Lord becoming more active, potentially even that he had managed to find a vessel to possess — and the argument over whether the former Death Eaters had done anything prosecutable in not reporting this phenomenon.

That had been answered with a claim that this had happened before, most recently in the winter and spring of '92, but none of the Death Eaters had known for certain what it meant. All of them had been leery of allowing Mysteries to examine it for fear that they would be preemptively detained — or worse, that their examination would trigger a trap and kill the Marked man, which was the same reason they'd declined to a man to let Mysteries try to find some way to get rid of the bloody thing, back in Eighty-One. Lucius had only allowed the Cursebreaker (and Mysteries) to examine it _now_ because it seemed to be actually affecting them (_a fate far worse than death_, he claimed, not that Lyra disagreed). And in any case, in the past, nothing had ever come of the Mark occasionally growing dark, so it had not seemed an urgent concern.

Emma, brilliant, perfect proxy that she was, had pegged that as corresponding to the period wherein Riddle's wraith had possessed Quirinus Quirrell, and had asked _Dumbledore himself_ to testify regarding the events of that school year — the ones which had culminated in Harry burning Quirrell alive, because Dumbledore either couldn't be arsed to do his bloody job or was too stupid to recognise major possession when it was sitting four seats down at breakfast. (Snape had cast a cushioning charm for his one-time saviour in corroborating his claim that Quirrell's visible symptoms had also been consistent with some exotic, sexually communicated disease he claimed to have acquired on his summer travels.)

And then they had been faced with a conundrum because, if the Dark Lord was truly still alive and able to influence the Marked Death Eaters, they could not be held accountable for their actions and imprisoned with _dementors_, because being boring for the rest of their lives would be _torture_ — that would be _unconscionable_. But they could also hardly allow them to _walk free_, able to influence the Wizengamot and the Ministry, to provide money and other resources to the Dark Lord or his associates, or even sabotage the usual state of affairs in such a way as to render them vulnerable to physical or political attack.

Narcissa had been willing to accept practically any penalty short of Azkaban, and the captured Death Eaters weren't exactly in a position to refuse when they were given the same choice as Lucius. They hadn't _liked_ swearing Unbreakable Vows to keep themselves from knowingly helping the Dark Lord, whether "against their will" or _not_ — or even further involve themselves in politics in general, in case the bugger tried something more subtle — but they had done it. Rendering every lord of the Allied Dark who had opposed Narcissa's direction effectively powerless (or mentally damaged, or _dead_), and their heirs and proxies under the impression that she would find some _worse_ fate for them if they _dared_ put a toe out of line from now on.

Coincidentally, the Malfoys were hardly impacted at all. Lucius, of course, had had to take the vows alongside everyone else, and so could no longer haunt the Ministry charming and bribing various members of the current administration, but the restrictions wouldn't unduly inhibit his maintaining their other business interests, so long as he worked through a proxy. And Narcissa herself wasn't Marked, so there was no problem at all with her continuing to vote their seat.

"Congratulations, Malfoy," Maïa said drily, reading over Lyra's shoulder. "By tomorrow morning, you might be even more unpopular than _me_."

"Eh, only with the other Allied Dark twats. Everyone else will probably be slightly more okay with him, since this is actually _big_, and _public_, and _working against the Dark Lord_. I mean, Emma _was_ right—"

Her argument to give the Malfoys a trial had been re-printed word-for-word in an article all shocked about _the only muggle in the Wizengamot_ supporting _Narcissa Malfoy_, speculating over whether Emma knew what the Malfoys had done in the war or believed the pile of shite Cissy was pushing. She'd given them a comment to the effect of, _You know I work for the _Blacks_, right? Do you know what _Bellatrix _did, in the war?_ Which had sparked off a round of articles debating whether she was insane, or if it was just that she was American and therefore obviously must have the morals of a pirate. (It was _great_.)

"—they might have been able to play off denouncing Riddle to stay out of Azkaban. Don't know, depends on how stupid he is. You know, we were just staying in a position to support you when you came back from your bloody holiday, or whatever, but there is _no_ way _anyone_ looks at _this _and thinks it's anything other than a blow to his potential forces, if he _should_ try to make a come-back. Like, everyone he could have _forced_ to help him is now dead, in Azkaban, or has a fucking guillotine hanging over their necks if they do so much as lift a finger for him. And I didn't get the impression he was terribly popular with the footsoldiers, at the end."

"But Malfoy _does_ live in Slytherin. With all of the other, er, children of the Allied Dark Houses," Maïa reminded her.

"Right, yes. And some of them might be upset about Cissy getting their fathers and uncles by the bollocks. Probably most of the ones who understand that she didn't get them taken out of power — because their Houses can still have all their money and power, it's just the Marked Death Eaters don't _control_ it anymore — but put a fucking _spike_ in the heart of pureblood supremacy."

"What the hell does _that_ mean, Black?"

"Er...it's dead?" Really, she'd thought that metaphor was pretty fucking clear.

"No, I got _that_, but—" He darted a quick glance over at Maïa.

"You can't _possibly_ offend me any more than you have over the past three years," she informed him.

He glared at her. "Well it's nothing _personal_, people like _me_ are just _better_ than people like _you_."

"Our exam scores suggest otherwise, Malfoy." That wasn't really fair. Draco ranked third in their class academically — fourth counting Lyra, but she didn't, because she really didn't care about that shite, wasn't even trying — and Maïa was a bloody _genius_. Probably cleverer than Lyra, really, she just had a head start, and fewer distractions thanks to a literal god burning out the tedious emotional shite. So, it was _almost_ as unfair to compare the other fourth-years to Maïa as it was to compare them to Lyra, they weren't really operating on the same level.

"Well, you're a fucking swot, aren't you. Anyone can spend all day with their nose in a book if they haven't got any friends to talk to."

Maïa's eyes narrowed. "Pot, meet kettle."

"What?"

"Oh, for fuck's sa— It's a muggle idiom. Pot calling the kettle black — means you've no room to talk. Or hadn't you noticed no one really _likes_ you, even in Slytherin."

"No one likes _anyone_ in Slytherin, Granger." Draco sneered at her as best he could. Didn't really pull it off. "Besides, I don't _need_ friends, I have more _important_ things going for me! Like _money_ and _class_."

"If you had _class_, you wouldn't have listed money first," Maïa snapped back. Which, well, she wasn't wrong. And also seemed to have won their little spat, since Draco failed to come up with an immediate rebuttal.

"Point to Granger," Lyra informed him. "What were we talking about? Oh, right, pureblood supremacy. It's dead. Cissy just killed it."

"Er... I'm afraid I don't see that connection, either," Maïa admitted. "Unless you mean working with my mum...?"

"Ah, no. Or, well, that's part of it, I guess, their whole coalition. But no, Cissy's been shifting the House of Malfoy's politics toward Ars Publica since she married Lucy, and the Allied Dark as a whole almost as long. And now they're all headed toward Common Fate, because democracy is coming for us whether we like it or not. Which means embracing not only _commoners_, most of whom don't give a shite about marrying half-bloods or muggleborns, but also the _muggleborns themselves_. Which means pureblood supremacy is now _politically_ stupid, as well as just _stupid_ stupid. And there _are_ Houses in the Allied Dark that have been opposing that direction because, well, they're racist dickheads, but every one of their lords is now dead, brain-dead, or under an unbreakable vow. And their successors are fucking terrified that Cissy will do worse to them if they don't fall in line. Which they should be — Cissy is brilliant and ruthless and has that Lovegood knack for improvisation which is just _unfair_—"

"What? What _Lovegood_? Mother's not related to the Lovegoods."

"Yes, she is."

"No, she's not! You know the family tree as well as I do, Black—"

"I know the family tree _better_ than you do. Narcissa's a bastard, sired by a Lovegood."

"You take that back!"

"Can't. It's true. Also, really fucking obvious — you _did_ know that's Cissy's natural hair colour, right?" Well, she charmed it a lighter, Malfoy-ish white-blonde, when it was really closer to the golden Rosier blonde, but still. Definitely didn't look anything like a Black.

"I am _not_ related to Loony Lovegood!"

"Oh, you definitely are. And Cassie." Not that she actually knew the degree of their relationship, she couldn't even remember Narcissa's sire's first name off the top of her head...and they were probably more closely related through the Ollivanders anyway — wasn't Xeno and Cassie's mother Sophiana Ollivander? She distinctly remembered some big scandal over Lord Ollivander's youngest daughter running away with a Lovegood, and Cassie had said... Well, not important.

"Bu— Wha— Does _Father_ know?"

"I'd be shocked if he didn't. Not that it _matters_, really — we still claimed her and raised her as a Black. Actually, Cassie notwithstanding, Lovegood madness tends to be a lot less violent than Black madness, so Lucy probably thinks a Black without any actual Black blood is a better match. You should ask him the next time you see him. And make sure you get a picture."

"'_Your move, Alexander_,' What does that mean?" Maïa asked, interrupting Lyra's teasing and Draco's fish-like gaping.

"What's that?"

"When asked to comment on the message she intends to send to _You Know Who_ with this _shocking revelation_, Lady Malfoy said, quote, 'If he reads this, and I hope he does, I would remind him that I was but a child the last time we matched wits. If he wants to play another round, he will be facing a far more formidable opponent than Albus Dumbledore. Your move, Alexander.' End quote."

Lyra snorted. Yes, she'd already known they used to play Autokrátores — Meda had mentioned something in passing, while catching Lyra up on the witch Cissy had grown up to become — but she'd kind of assumed that would have been when she was about Lyra's age. The idea of Professor Riddle playing children's games (or what passed as children's games in their household) with a little eight or nine-year-old version of Cissy, both taking the thing _very seriously_, because of course they would, was just too funny. Also, British politics was _significantly_ less complicated than that particular strategy game, which was funny in its own way.

Draco actually managed to answer _civilly_. Might've been a first for him and Maïa. "It's this stupid game Mother likes — like chess, but about twenty times more complicated. One side is Alexander the Great, and the other side is Persia."

"Way to undersell it. I think I've mentioned it before. You've seen an animated chess set, right?" Maïa nodded. "It's kind of like that, but with about a thousand individual pieces representing twenty different cities and regions between Macedonia and India. One player is Alexander. The other assumes command of one of these cities or regions, and the rest are animated to react certain ways if you do certain things. But then— I've mentioned Dru hates kids, right?" Maïa nodded again. "Yeah, well, she modified ours to make it more complicated, on the theory that it would keep Bella and Meda occupied and out of her hair longer the more complex it was.

"So you don't just direct your armies, you have to convince leaders of these regions to give you supplies or outright ally with you, putting more men under your command. As the conquest progresses, you can be betrayed by your allies, or the cities you've already captured can muster resistance movements if you annoy them too badly — you have to administer the ones you take over, of course. And the whole thing gets more difficult the further you get, because you can see everything going on — you could scry it in real life — but there's a time-delay between giving orders and your armies acting on them based on the geographic distance between your command and theirs. There are at least fifteen-hundred variables, which is completely absurd. And they don't _just_ pertain to in-game choices. I spent four _months_ picking the thing apart so I could modify it and actually _win_ for once, and _that_ just tripped a condition causing random pieces to act as spies and deliver my orders to the defenders of the nearest city instead of the commanders they were meant for!" And when she'd finally figured out how to counter _that_, Dru had changed the language inputs so she'd had to give all of her orders to her pieces in Koiné. _And_ her speeches convincing the tiny automatons to ally with her. Only hers — Meda was still allowed to use French.

(Bella hadn't even spoken Koiné back then, she'd learnt it _specifically_ because Dru was _not_ going to win _their _contest, Bella _was_ going to find a way to cheat at that stupid game. Or at least, she had been pretty determined to before she went to Hogwarts and kind of forgot about it.)

"So, it worked, is what you're saying. Keeping you occupied."

Lyra pouted at her. "Yes. I never said Dru isn't fucking _brilliant_, she just _really _hates kids. And completely wasted her potential spending all her time on politics instead of arithmancy. Because arithmancy isn't ladylike, or something." Well, specifically, artificing wasn't ladylike. Nor was enchanting, and definitely not wardcrafting — Dru had _only_ approved of Ciardha teaching Bella anything he damn well pleased because it kept her busy when she was little and even more annoying. _Theoretical_ arithmancy was fine, elegant, even, but Dru, like Lyra herself, preferred actually _doing things_ with magic than just _describing how_ to do things with magic. Which meant other than tweaking their games and inventing new spells on the fly to force Bella to shut up, Dru had hardly ever done anything with her talent for the subject. "Though it is, apparently, ladylike to know more about history and military strategy than any three actual historians."

Maïa gave her a rather peculiar look. "I don't think you've ever told me anything about Druella at all. Certainly not that she's a brilliant enchanter."

"Well, you didn't think Bella got her brains from _Cygnus_, did you? I mean, yeah, there _have_ been some really fucking brilliant Blacks, but that's more madness and audacity and cunning than actual...intelligence, I guess. Most of the time. The Rosiers tend to be better at interpreting and solving problems, and arithmancy and shite." She shrugged. There wasn't really any better way to put it. The Blacks didn't tend to be _stupid_, but they weren't the same sort of geniuses that the Rosiers tended to be. (Maïa would fit _right_ in with the Rosiers. Dru would probably like her, actually, given her tendency toward quiet bookishness. Lyra hadn't actually asked, but she'd be willing to bet Maïa hadn't ever been loud and obnoxious, even when she was little.) And now _Draco_ was giving her a weird look. "_What_?"

"Were you— Did you actually grow up with Grandmother?"

_Shite_. "No."

Honestly, she'd completely forgotten about Dru when they'd been trying to think of potential fictional foster-parents. Pity, that would probably have made sense to anyone who _didn't_ know Bella...or Dru. On the other hand, Dru was still alive and (Lyra assumed) not all that hard to track down. People would _definitely_ ask her if she really _had_ raised Lyra, and people annoying her about children she was supposedly raising was one of those things that Dru hated about children. Which meant she would probably tell them that she'd had nothing to do with Lyra. So, maybe... Yeah, never mind. Mickey was _definitely_ the better choice.

"That's— Just '_no'_? You did, didn't you!"

"No means no, you poncy little twat!"

"Insult me all you want, but—"

"Was already planning on it, _mon cher bougre vénal_. _Anyway_," she said, over his red-faced objection to her _perfectly accurate_ characterisation of his general...Malfoy-ness. "Cissy's apparently putting up an active defence against Riddle this time around. Which I hadn't really expected, but I guess it is kind of the only reasonable position to stake at this point, and no one was going to let her stay neutral if it actually came out he's trying to make a come-back. Not that I expect he would've made it very far anyway, but she definitely just cut his knees out from under him, so. As Emma so eloquently informed everyone, House Malfoy is definitely, unequivocally anti-Voldemort, now. Not that anyone puts _that much_ effort into an exit strategy if they're really confident they're on the winning side, anyway, so I would argue Cissy was _always_ kind of anti-Voldemort, but blaming that riot on Riddle is really, _really_ not the same as throwing Bella into the path of a rampaging quintaped via fake Imperius."

Bella wouldn't _care_ that Cissy had used her to escape Azkaban, especially since she'd already been going there anyway. She _might_ have cared about Cissy denouncing Riddle back when she was still his mind-slave, but she probably would've accepted that Cissy and even Lucius were more useful to the Cause if they maintained a position of influence in society.

"_Fake_ Imperius? What the—"

Lyra grinned at Draco's entirely sincere outrage. "Good boy, keep that up."

"What the hell are you talking about?!"

"_Exactly_."

"Er...I think he actually believes his father was Imperiused."

Lyra sniggered, mostly because she realised that — that's why it was so funny. "He was. You can't have an Imperius Defence without an actual Imperius. Just, Bella didn't cast it. And he definitely became a Death Eater of his own free will. Well, because Candidus and Brax told him to, but."

"And you're suggesting...what?"

"I'm not _suggesting _anything, baby cousin — I'm flat out _telling you_ that Cissy, in true House of Black tradition, fabricated evidence to subvert the course of justice by Imperiusing her own husband and blaming her sister. Fucking brilliant, really."

"Wha— Why would you _say _that?" His eyes darted over to Maïa again, obviously enough that even Lyra could pick up that he meant _why would you say that in front of _her_?_

Maïa just scoffed at him. "Oh, relax, Malfoy. I'm not going to tell anyone, much as your parents deserve it. We're political allies now, or hadn't you heard?"

More to the point, Lyra would be obligated to break Cissy out of Azkaban — making _Cissy_ boring was even worse than making _most_ people boring. That was, she was pretty sure, the same reason Sirius hadn't fucked her over, perhaps by showing up at the trial and offering evidence that Lucy had been a Death Eater forever, and therefore Cissy was lying about everything. Not that Sirius didn't believe she could break Cissy out of Azkaban, but the dementors would probably rat her out, so she'd have to go on the run and never see Maïa again (unless she could be convinced to come along for the ride, but somehow Lyra didn't think Maïa was really _suited_ to life on the run), and then Sirius would have to run the House by himself. He might just lie in bed until he died or run off to spend the rest of his life as a dog instead.

"Remember over the summer we had a conversation about _not babying Draco_?" He nodded warily. "Cissy lied to you about Lucy being a Death Eater because she didn't think you could fake believing the façade. But you _really_ do need to learn how to lie, so. Maybe practise that." Also, if Cissy wanted her to explain politics to Draco, that meant it was _totally_ Lyra's business to teach him shite he really ought to already know. She couldn't have it both ways. "Now, if you'll excuse us, we have places to be." Not that she actually wanted to go to Transfiguration, but this seemed as good a place to end the conversation as any. She _had_ answered his stupid question, anyway.

Maïa, unlike Lyra, _did_ want to go to Transfiguration, but had apparently forgotten that until Lyra said something. (Damn it, they probably wouldn't have had to go at all if she'd kept her mouth shut and let her stay distracted.) She cast a _tempus_ and yelped, turning _very_ quickly toward the door. "Come on, Lyra! We're going to be _so_ late!"

"It's not like you don't already know everything in the lecture, you know," she grumbled, but did follow her — she _had_ been bored with Draco, after all. And Minnie was always so delightfully _peeved_ when Lyra showed up halfway through her lessons.

_Tee hee_.

* * *

_And Narcissa manages to single-handedly cripple Voldemort before he's even resurrected, get her friends out of trouble, **and** regain total control over her political faction, allowing her to hold together their alliance with Ars Publica and Common Fate so they can kick out Dumbledore and take over the Ministry. Because she's fucking scary. Rosier brilliance plus Black audacity plus Lovegood instincts is just cheating._

_The start of the Tournament arc begins with the next chapter. Because we're absurd, this will be ridiculously long — there are eleven scenes over three days plotted out right now, because there are too many characters to introduce and too many things going on. It's possible we have a problem. Chapters will continue to be posted as we finish them._

_—Lysandra_


	19. I don't know how to curtsy!

Hermione's first hint that something unusual was happening was just how full the Great Hall was.

Mealtimes over weekends were usually rather haphazard, especially breakfast and lunch. Less constrained by class schedules, whether many students even made it to meals was sort of up in the air, and certainly not in so narrow a window as they needed to during the week. There was food available at the tables in the Great Hall pretty much constantly from seven in the morning until three in the afternoon, many of her classmates didn't bother making their way here at any particular time. Hermione did, just out of habit, but bothering to get up at the normal time on weekends put her in the minority.

When she came in for lunch on Saturday, though, she was surprised to see most of the seats were filled. In the next few minutes, as Lyra babbled away on something to do with their idea to artificially induce the feedback loop she'd experienced absorbing thunderbird and parseltongue — which _was_ fascinating, Hermione was just distracted — she frowned to herself, absently chewing, confused by the unusual attendance.

"Are you alright there, Maïa?" Lyra poked her in the arm a couple times, apparently having noticed Hermione wasn't listening.

"Sorry, I just... Does the Hall seem strangely full to you? I didn't think the guests were arriving until tomorrow." Because, the Triwizard Tournament _was_ starting up soon, even Hermione couldn't have missed that.

She would admit that, sometimes, she could be just a little bit oblivious, especially when it came to social things, quidditch games and whatnot. She'd been aware a game was coming up when Gryffindor was playing, but only because the growing excitement was at least partially focused on Harry, and he always became visibly nervous as the day approached — if Gryffindor _weren't_ playing, she often didn't even realise one was coming up until she came down for breakfast the day of the match, and saw people were wearing their quidditch paraphernalia. In second and third years, other people's anxiety over the Heir of Slytherin and Sirius breaking into the castle had hardly registered. The former she'd only noticed when people were being awful to Harry — she'd been rather too distracted with her _own_ anxiety over the matter to care what was going on with everyone else — and the latter she'd mostly been irritated with how silly people were being, those rare occasions she even noticed.

The build-up to the Tournament, though, _that_ she'd noticed. It would be difficult not to, with how completely insane everyone was going over it. The castle even _looked_ different. The staff — by which she mostly meant the elves and Filch — had clearly been scouring the place, forcing the eccentric castle into something approaching presentability. They couldn't do anything about the inconsistent topography or the moving staircases or the randomly-placed portraits, but they _could_ at least make sure everything was _clean_. Hermione hadn't even realised how grimy many of the corridors had been until suddenly they weren't anymore, the stone of the walls and ceilings now a clear, pale off-white, subtle lines of colour visible in the tile flooring she'd never noticed before. Those unused rooms that seemed to be bloody everywhere had been dusted, the more deteriorated furnishings replaced, no longer looked as though they'd been abandoned for centuries. The omnipresent suits of armour had all been polished, along with all the metal accents here and there, the halls practically gleaming when the sun hit them correctly — which it did more often, since the windows had been cleaned too. The portraits had even been touched up, gradually over the last weeks, the occasional defect patched over and the colours now far more vibrant.

The cleaning project was intense enough Hermione had actually seen Hogwarts elves outside of the kitchens for the first time. She'd stumbled across a group of them, more than a few but less than a dozen, in the process of retouching one of the hallways — this one had been in serious enough condition it'd required stonework, replacing bits out of the wall and some of the tiles on the floor. The elves had started with surprise at her turning up, but had clearly recognised her, cheerfully greeting her instead of...whatever it was they would have done otherwise, she wasn't certain.

She'd even caught Filch at work a few times — it appeared restoring the portraits was his job. He would unhang the portrait to set it on the floor leaning against a wall, where he'd sit in front of it, Mrs Norris curled up in his folded legs, as he touched up the portrait with a set of brushes and a sizeable box of paints, muttering to the cat and chatting with the resident of the portrait. Which was interesting, for multiple reasons. Filch, evidently, had some degree of artistic talent and training to be able to do that sort of work, which wasn't something Hermione had known before. (Though, thinking back on it, she _had_ heard he'd restored the Fat Lady last year, so she shouldn't have been surprised.) Also, magical portraits were, well, _magical_ — wasn't Filch a squib? His brushes must be enchanted to interface with the magics of the portraits somehow, she wondered...

(Squibs could use potions and devices with their own magic...but could muggles? The distinction between the two hadn't been consistently recognised until after the Statute, which _would_ suggest they could, but she hadn't read anything on the subject...because, obviously, _testing_ it would be a violation of the Statute. Hmm.)

Even the Great Hall hadn't been left untouched. There hadn't been much in the way of _cleaning_ to do here, but it still didn't look quite the same. The room had been expanded — it had already been somewhat larger at the beginning of the year, to accommodate the extended staff table, but there were now _six_ tables in the room, the new one extending down the middle between the Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws. Most of the apprentices were now sitting at this new table, which still left it mostly empty, but they were also joined by Professor Lovegood. She never had seemed quite at ease with the rest of the staff, looked far more comfortable there, happily chatting with a few of the older Ravenclaws.

There were also _far_ more banners over their heads than usual. It was typical for the house banners to go up for the Welcoming Feast, but after that they were usually stashed away again, and the ones over the house tables weren't _quite_ the same as usual — well, the Hufflepuffs' and Ravenclaws' were, but the Gryffindor one was obviously different, like a proper coat of arms with a griffin instead of just a drawing of a lion (though the colour scheme was the same), while Slytherin's was _completely_ unfamiliar. The house banners alternated every few metres with the full Hogwarts crest, all the way down the Hall over each of the house tables, but over the staff table the Hogwarts flag alternated with magical Britain's (a red dragon over a purple field), and over the central table she spotted more copies of Britain's, one copy of the Union Jack (to her surprise, she'd never seen it on the magical side before), but also a few banners that were completely unfamiliar.

They weren't unfamiliar to Lyra, though. The Gryffindor and Slytherin banners were in the colours of the actual noble houses that had once existed, which were slightly different in Gryffindor's case and _completely_ different in Slytherin's. (Which wasn't a surprise — Godric had been the first Gryffindor, but Slytherin was one of the Seventeen Founders of the Wizengamot, the family predated the school by at least five hundred years, and probably rather longer.) Hufflepuff's descendants _had_ formed a noble house eventually, but it had been a few generations down the line, long enough Helga hadn't been the founder of it, so Hogwarts didn't use their banner; Ravenclaw's children had ended up in various British houses and Gaelic clans, and there had never been a single family claiming to be her direct heirs, so there was no banner to fly for her. (Apparently, Ravenclaw's inheritance had been complicated somewhat when Rowena had simply _vanished_ one day, when she hadn't yet been quite properly old for a witch, so she hadn't arranged which branch of her large family should carry on her legacy after her, and they hadn't been able to settle the matter amongst themselves.)

According to Lyra, the flags she didn't recognise belonged to the ICW, Scandinavia (or Daneland, to use the proper magical term), and Aquitania — _not_ France, classes at Beauxbatons were mostly taught in French but the school was located in Provence, which was part of a separate country on the magical side. So they'd included the national flags of everyone who would be here...with the obvious exceptions of Miskatonic, who would be sending a judge, and the Republic of Ireland, who'd been invited to observe. When Hermione had pointed out the oversight, Lyra had smirked, and said _of course_ they'd left out the Americans and the Irish, they hated the former and sometimes forgot the latter even existed.

So, this international event was going to get off to a _great_ start, was what Lyra was implying. Good omen, that.

While the changes in the appearance of the castle was the most obvious factor to Hermione, even she had noticed people had been behaving...peculiarly, the last couple weeks. It was a low-level excitement, slowly building as the Tournament approached, contributing to the other children acting out somewhat more often than usual. But Hermione, of course, had as little contact with her classmates as possible, and what little she did she preferred to be in the form of study groups, so she'd honestly only sort of noticed. (Which was the way she liked it, over-excited children were _very_ irritating.) The professors had been somewhat more obvious to her — they all, from Snape to McGonagall and even _Sprout_, seemed to be operating on somewhat shorter tempers, snapping at their students rather more quickly, McGonagall even going off on people for minor dress code violations...which was _especially_ stupid, because Hermione had been under the impression the "dress code" was a matter of informal habit, there wasn't actually anything about it in the student handbook. (She'd checked.) The major exceptions were Hagrid, who remained his cheerful, unruffled self, and Lovegood, who only seemed slightly exhausted by the scramble to make the school and everyone in it presentable.

(With some frequency — before the extra table was added, obviously — Lovegood would come down to a meal and, seemingly on auto-pilot, sit at the Ravenclaw table. Not that anybody at all minded — the Ravenclaws were, for the most part, more than happy to reclaim their famous alumna.)

If anything, the increasing air of excitement should lead to _fewer_ of the school's residents being present at lunch — that the entire bloody school seemed to be here was...weird.

Lyra seemed equally confused, blinking out at the room as though she were just noticing exactly how many people there were about. "Huh, you're right. I didn't even notice... Wait, is that _Éanna_? What is _he_ doing here?"

In time with Lyra's outburst, Hermione saw Snape's youngest, most awkward apprentice slip through the doors into the Entrance Hall. Hermione still wasn't entirely certain what she thought of Éanna Ó Caoimhe. He obviously knew his Potions _very_ well, of course, and was miles ahead of even Lyra in Alchemy — they got into wandering discussions on the subject with some regularity, half of the time Hermione could barely even follow it (occasionally slipping into Irish _really_ didn't help) — so he was _qualified_ to help out in labs and teach some of the younger years, but Hermione wasn't certain he was _suited_.

He was, after all, _very_ awkward. He tended to be a bit fidgety, he virtually never made eye-contact, he usually spoke in odd, stuttering, round-about sentences, and he was even more oblivious than Hermione, didn't even pick up on the most _obvious_ of sarcasm most of the time. Autism, she thought, though she wasn't certain — the word he (and Lyra) used was "spastic", which was _definitely_ wrong, and also _very_ offensive, though neither of them seemed to realise that. (She assumed the word was used differently on the magical side, and neither Lyra nor Éanna himself knew what autism was.) Also, she didn't think she'd ever actually met an autistic person before, only read about it, so, just a guess.

Which, Hermione was mostly okay with that. She meant, it was vaguely uncomfortable sometimes, just being around him — he was _very_ weird, it could be unsettling — but he also had no interest in and very little patience for the stupid pointless nonsense most of her peers spent their time talking about. If Éanna was around, they'd probably just end up talking about magical theory or enchanting or alchemy or Irish, which was just fine by her. Sometimes, she'd end up being asked to explain some confusing thing a "normal" person had said or done — Hermione apparently being the authority on "normal" people, for some inexplicable reason. That was _far_ less entertaining, but thankfully Éanna didn't seem to _care_ what "normal" people thought enough to stick with any one issue for very long, such diversions usually blew over quickly.

Though, Hermione had been replaced as the authority on "normal" people recently: instead of joining the other apprentices, Éanna drifted over to sit at the Gryffindor table, right next to Gin (and Neville). This was a new thing, Gin and Éanna, and Hermione wasn't quite sure what to think about it. Gin was rather protective of Éanna, even more than Lyra was, and Hermione was pretty sure Snape had wrangled Lyra into looking out for him somehow — Gin had even hexed a few Slytherins in her year who'd been mocking him to his face, she'd gotten detention for it and everything. (Not that Éanna had seemed to care or even notice he was being insulted, but still.) Hermione would _almost_ wonder if there weren't something, like a romantic something, going on between the two of them, if it weren't so very hard to imagine Éanna actually dating anyone. But it was still very weird.

Case in point: before Éanna could even say anything, Gin had picked up a bowl of carrots and set it down in front him. Hermione had noticed Éanna was a _very_ picky eater — he would have buttered toast for breakfast, and potatoes and carrots, mashed up together and covered in gravy and a surprisingly thick layer of pepper, and maybe a bit of chicken for dinner, she'd hardly ever seen him eat anything else. Gin had apparently noticed the same thing, enough to make sure the carrots were in reach without needing to be asked.

There was _something_ going on between those two, Hermione didn't get it, it was weird.

"What are you doing here, Éanna?"

Gin shot Lyra a flat glare, Hermione jumped in before she could snap at her. "She means, you don't usually come down for lunch." He would show up for dinner — because Snape insisted, he'd complained — and _sometimes_ for breakfast, but he almost never took lunch in the Great Hall. She assumed the elves brought him something in his office, she'd never asked.

Éanna didn't look up as he answered, focused on mashing up his carrots. "Master Severus said I had to be here for the announcements."

"What announcements?"

"Er, didn't you hear?" Neville asked, a very odd, uncertain expression on his face. Probably at the thought that she and Lyra _both_ didn't know something, that didn't happen very often. "McGonagall told everyone there are going to be announcements after lunch today, the whole school is supposed to be here."

"Oh." Lyra blinked for a second, then shrugged. "We've been in the library all morning, must have missed it. Did she say what it was about?"

"Well, it'll be about the Tournament, won't it?" Harry said, flopping down on Hermione's other side. "They are coming in tomorrow, right, they'll want to lecture at us about proper behaviour first."

"Funny, you think they'd know not to ask for something that'll never, ever happen."

"Not everybody is you, Lyra."

"Of course not, Harry, I'm _me_. But there's also, you know, the Weasley Twins."

Harry grimaced. "Yeah, okay, good point."

Lunch went on as usual, if rather more noisy — and not just because there were more people than she'd expect on a weekend, their Tournament guests would be coming in tomorrow, the excitement on the air was almost tangible. Harry was even _smiling_, which... Okay, that wasn't _entirely_ fair. It was true that, for most of their first two and a half years or so, Harry had been pretty consistently miserable, she'd hardly ever seen Harry actually _look_ happy (except immediately after quidditch matches). But she'd noticed he'd been doing better, starting around winter break last year. She assumed it was because his home life had _vastly_ improved, having somewhere to go besides his awful family, and having more than a tiny handful of friends, and adults around who were actually worth anything if he needed something. And then there was the mind magic, of course, sort of hard to avoid dealing with one's emotional issues when learning a form of magic that required awareness of one's own mind.

Hermione would admit she'd been...concerned, at first, with how the Blacks and Zabinis had been inserting themselves into Harry's life, but... Watching him now, smiling and laughing with Gin and the Gryffindor boys, he looked _much_ better, he looked _happy_. (He'd put on some weight too, which was also good, and was she imagining it or was he a little taller? She thought he was taller.) Which... Good. That was good.

(She wondered if she looked different now too.)

Never mind that now, focus on her conversation with Lyra about...enchantment interface schema, right. The problem with non-magical people using magical artefacts was that many of them interfaced with a person's _magic_ but, thinking about their omniglot hack idea she'd realised, if they instead interfaced through the _mind_...

Muggles _could_ theoretically do mind magic — occlumency, of course, they didn't have the power to project themselves outward, so no legilimency. (Though, passively picking up things _might_ be possible, since certain muggles _did_ have divinatory talent, not the point.) In fact, Hermione noted that Andromeda had tested Emma a little, just to see if she'd be able to resist mind-influencing magics, and she did pretty damn well. Probably not well enough to keep out a true legilimens, but certainly more than enough to throw off compulsions and such. So, yes, theoretically, it should be perfectly possible to design enchantments mediated through mind-magic that muggles could use. Was Lyra thinking of trying their language thing with Mum and—

_Wands_.

Lyra was...contemplating a design for a _wand_...

...that drew on ambient energy...

...and shaped the spell with mind magic...

...so it could be used _by a muggle_...

...like Mum, so she could protect herself if she needed to. Oh, and also keep her tea warm.

And it... Hermione thought about it for a moment, and that _should_ actually be possible. Unless there was some limiting factor she couldn't think of off hand...

Lyra had actually come up with an idea for a _muggle wand_, specifically for _Hermione's mum_.

...

Hermione bit her lip so hard it actually hurt — she'd probably be _very_ embarrassed afterward if she out and snogged Lyra at the Gryffindor table.

(Sometimes, Hermione thought she might be in love with Lyra's brain. Was that weird?)

Distracted as Hermione was with the implications of that idea — and also trying to control herself, god _damn_ teenage hormones... — it took a moment for her to realise something was going on. By the time Hermione noticed they had guests, they were already over halfway across the room to the staff table. A clump of adults in formal robes, with the exception of one woman toward the front of the pack, who was wearing a _very_ expensive-looking black and red dress instead, could be wrong but it looked muggle-made. It was _also_ showing rather more than was entirely decent, but—

"Wait, isn't that Mirabella Zabini?" Hermione had actually known about Mirabella Zabini before she'd known the magical world existed — she'd taken over as CEO of LES, one of the more important tech firms in the world, back in... Damn, she forgot. Hermione had been eight or nine or so, she thought. But anyway, she'd made a point of getting her face out there, taking television interviews and such, making hers probably the most recognisable face in the industry on this side of the Atlantic.

Hermione hadn't even realised that Blaise Zabini's mother, the Mirabella Zabini who was Director of Education and on the Hogwarts Board of Governors, was the _same_ Mirabella Zabini who was CEO of LES, until winter break last year, when she'd confirmed it herself in a letter to Hermione's parents. She still didn't know what to think about the tech CEO and the woman in charge of magical education in Britain being the same person.

It didn't help that the _magical_ Mirabella Zabini was rather infamous for _maybe_ being a serial killer — everybody suspected she'd been marrying and then murdering men for their wealth, but nobody could prove it. Yeah, had no idea what to think about Mirabella Zabini.

"Merlin, it is." Neville sounded uncomfortable — he'd probably met all the people high up in the Ministry, maybe he knew her...or maybe it was the dress, his face _was_ a little pink.

(She _did_ look nice, Hermione could tell that much, but it did nothing for her, which was kind of weird, because she'd sort of thought she was gay now? She meant, Lyra was distractingly pretty sometimes, so...but, she was _most_ distracting when she'd just said something brilliant, and Hermione didn't know Zabini at all, so maybe it was more complicated than just... She didn't know, she was confusing herself.)

Anyway, Neville wasn't done. "Oh, and there's Crouch too, next to her." The dour, fastidious-looking man next to Zabini, he must mean. Hermione knew Crouch was the Director of International Cooperation — essentially, the equivalent of the Foreign Secretary (though she had the feeling the position was somewhat less prestigious than it was in the UK). Crouch personally she really only knew because he'd been a totalitarian Director of Law Enforcement toward the end of the war, meaning he was responsible for Sirius (and dozens of other people, in fact) being remanded to Azkaban without trial, and because he was the only other omniglot Lyra could think of off-hand. "What are they doing here?"

Lyra shrugged. "They're probably giving this announcement."

"Did they really need to dress up just to meet us?" Harry said, sounding rather exasperated. He'd complained about Zabini's dressing habits, or lack thereof, more times than Hermione could count. Apparently, living with her could be...distracting. "Honestly, you'd think she was going to meet the Queen or something."

Hermione happened to be taking a sip of her tea at the moment, and almost choked on it. "What are— Harry, how the hell do you think women dress when they're going to _meet the Queen?_"

"I'm not talking about _women_, I'm talking about Mira."

She blinked. "Okay, good point."

Before long, their group of visitors got to the high table. While the whispers still raged behind them, Zabini and Crouch briefly talked — Dumbledore and Crouch looked miserable and resentful, but whatever it was wasn't troubling Zabini at all, still all smooth and graceful, Hermione could even hear her laughing from here. Come to think of it, the thing making them both miserable was probably Zabini herself — she'd been ramming a litany of (perfectly reasonable) educational reforms in over Dumbledore's head, and had spent her entire political career showing up Crouch, because she disliked him and wanted to mess with him (according to Lyra, anyway) — so she guessed that followed.

After a brief discussion, Dumbledore swept up to his feet, arms dramatically raised for silence. He got it after a few seconds, save for some quiet mutters and clicks of forks. "As you are all no doubt aware, the Triwizard Tournament is opening tomorrow evening." The last few words were drowned out a bit by a storm of cheering, Dumbledore raised his hands again, nodding indulgently at the noise until it tapered off. "Yes, yes, quite exciting. Our school will be playing host to a number of international guests for the duration of the Tournament. Our friends from the Ministry here wished to speak to you briefly on what they expect from you all over the coming year. If you would, Director—"

Edging a step toward the centre of the high table, Zabini called, "Thank you, Headmaster." Dumbledore looked slightly irritated — Hermione guessed he'd been expecting Crouch would speak for them — but he nodded gracefully, sinking back into his chair. Standing before them, her hands clasped in front of her and with a brilliant politician's smile on her face, Zabini started speaking. She had one of those politician's voices too, smooth and rich and meticulously articulated — but one of the _good_ politicians, didn't sound at all like a robot. "Hello there, everyone. I understand you have many things you would rather be doing than listen to me, so I will try to make this as brief as I can.

"My name is Mirabella Zabini. I am Director of Education with the Ministry of Magic and, in that capacity, a member of the Board of Governors of this very school I'm standing in." She leaned forward a little, her voice falling into a false whisper. "You have me to thank for the changes in the classroom and the extra staff you might have noticed this year, by the way." There was a little bit of scattered cheering at that, Zabini quietly smiled through it. (Dumbledore looked like he'd bitten into something sour.) "And next to me, this is Bartemius Crouch, Director of International Cooperation, who you also may have heard of."

There was a brief, uncomfortable silence as the stiff-looking Crouch just moodily stared out at— Oh, _my_. Hermione hadn't gotten a real good look at him until now, but was that a _Hitler moustache?_ Oh God, it was, it was definitely a Hitler moustache. Had nobody ever told the poor man he looked _uncomfortably_ like _Adolf bloody Hitler_ like that? And this was their country's head diplomat, Jesus Christ...

"Now, as I'm sure you know, the Triwizard Tournament is a traditional event, dating back to the Thirteenth Century, held between the three greatest schools of magic in Western Europe — Beauxbatons, Durmstrang, and, of course, our very own Hogwarts. A single champion will be selected to represent each of the three schools, though there will be events open to whomever of you will like to participate. Some of these events will be the very same tasks the champions are competing in, where other students will have the opportunity to aid their champion or sabotage those of the other schools, depending on the particulars of the task at hand. Details on what exactly this will look like will be explained as these events approach. But keep in mind: just because only one of you will be this school's champion, does _not_ mean you will have nothing to do for the duration of the competition."

If the students had been excited before, it was at a whole new level now. As far as Hermione knew, nobody had any idea what the Tournament itself would actually be like — the news that they could still participate even if they weren't the school's sole champion had the whole room abuzz, shuffling and whispering and laughing.

Zabini let them marinate in that for a bit before speaking again. "The delegations from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons will be arriving tomorrow evening. For the duration of their stay, they will be dining here in the Great Hall — I assume this fifth table was put here for them — but while some may choose to move into dormitories that have been made available in the north and east wings, they will be providing for their own housing. Also, they will be coming with their own professors to keep up their education while they are here. Some may decide to join you in your classes, but I would not expect many to do so — their schools follow different curricula, and as English is not a major international language I don't expect many of them to be very good at it. Whatever they decide, I do hope you will all endeavor to make our guests feel welcome.

"But," Zabini said, lifting a single finger, "the delegations from our sister schools will not be our only guests. In addition to the three headmasters, a few international dignitaries have been invited to fill out the panel of judges. One is already here: Castalia Lovegood was invited as a judge, back before she took a teaching position at Hogwarts so could no longer be considered properly impartial."

From her spot in the middle table, Lovegood called, "I don't think anyone's ever called me a _dignitary_. I wasn't properly _dignified_ before either, was I?"

Zabini waited for the laughter to die out, her expression of tolerant amusement unnervingly similar to Dumbledore's. "In any case, Professor Lovegood will remain on as a judge. The International Confederation was also asked to send a representative. They have selected one Régis Delacour, ambassador from the I.C.W. to _Le Syndicat Impérial sur les Peuples de la Gascogne et du Languedoc_." Her French was actually pretty good, with only a little bit of an accent — it didn't seem quite English, though, perhaps from Italian. "This is a regional veela government, operating in north-central Aquitania. Some of you might recognise 'Delacour' as the name of a large veela clan — as I understand it, Mister Delacour married a veela woman, and was essentially adopted by her clan, taking the name for his own."

There was some grumbling at that — because of course there was, British mages were racist idiots — but Zabini didn't linger over it, raised her voice to press on over them. "Our third guest judge may come as something of a shock. He is an ancient metamorph, an expert in all forms of witchcraft, and will be going by the name Salazar Slytherin. I understand if—" Zabini broke off when the storm of shouting from the students rose over her, it took her some seconds to get them quiet enough again she could be understood. Her voice raised a bit, "We can't say— I can't stress enough, we aren't certain if this man is truly who he claims to be. The Salazar Slytherin who was a founder of this school lived over a thousand years ago, and nobody yet living knows enough of the events or the people of that time to confirm nor deny anything he might say in an attempt to prove his identity. We at the Ministry are not necessarily taking him at his word, but neither can we be certain he is not exactly who he says he is.

"However, I must caution you: it _is_ possible. It is known, from the few documents we have that survived from that time, that the historical Salazar Slytherin was, truly, a metamorph; metamorphs, as many of you know, cannot die of old age. It is worth noting that there has never been any confirmation of the death of Salazar Slytherin, not by his contemporaries nor in the centuries since. The metamorph who will be judging the tournament is a _very_ powerful wizard, that is for certain, and a rather intimidating man to be in a room with, truth be told. It is very much possible that he truly is His Grace the Lord Salazar of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Slytherin. Whatever doubts you may have, I suggest you treat him with all due respect, just in case."

While their classmates continued going insane over that, Hermione threw up a couple privacy charms, turned to Lyra to ask, "Is that true?"

Lyra rolled her eyes. "No, obviously not, Flamel's judging the Tournament. I guess she just decided to have a little fun with it."

"I know that, I didn't mean that part." Though, it was a bit absurd to think the fairy — in the sense of the Greater Fae, not the little magical pests — pretending to be a middle-aged witch from Iran (badly) was actually the famous immortal alchemist(s) Nicholas (and Perenelle) Flamel. Especially odd, because apparently they'd only ever been one person, just pretended to be a married couple. (For some reason, Hermione didn't get it.) _Also_ apparently the Flamels got _far_ more credit for their skill with alchemy than they deserved — they _had_ been master alchemists (or, just _one_ master alchemist), but their crowning achievement, the immortality-granting Philosopher's Stone, had been a con from the beginning. They'd been a metamorph the whole time, the story about the Stone had, apparently, just been an excuse they'd come up with to explain away not aging like normal people.

Hermione wasn't entirely sure how she felt about metamorphs in general, or their new Professor of Divination in particular. The idea of metamorphs, immortal witches and wizards with often absurd magical abilities, was intimidating as all hell...but on the other hand, this solved her greatest issue with the Flamels: they _couldn't_ share their secret to immortality because there was _no secret_, they'd simply been born with it. And it was a bit cruel, when she thought about it, that so many people were mourning the "death" of the Flamels, but there she was at the high table with the other professors right now, pretending to be a fairy pretending (badly) to be an Iranian witch.

And, apparently, she was going to pretend to be _Salazar Slytherin_ for the duration of the Tournament. Okay, Hermione knew, from things Lyra had said and a few older history books she'd found, that Slytherin's modern reputation was mostly nonsense, and Malfoy's gambit had pretty much killed pureblood supremacy for the foreseeable future, but that didn't change the fact that Flamel was going to, just, waltz around pretending to be the historical figure the crazy racists of magical Britain held up as their hero. Hermione had to wonder exactly how she was going to depict him, because, there was just _no way_ this was going to go well.

But, as much as she thought Flamel, or the metamorph who used to be the Flamels, might seem rather heartless and cruel, and maybe just a little bit _completely fucking insane_...she was a _damn_ good Divination teacher! Hermione was _actually learning_ things, she could _do divination_ herself now! Nothing incredibly impressive, but... Objectively speaking, she _was_ one of the better professors in the school — which only made sense when she thought about it, she _had_ had hundreds of years of practice — and she was even _funny!_ So, yeah, deciding how she felt about Perenelle Flamel or Kyrah Shirazi, or whoever, was _very_ complicated.

But she also wasn't really the point right now. "I mean the stuff about Slytherin. Was he really a metamorph?"

"Oh, sure." Lyra shrugged that off — as though the suggestion that one of the Hogwarts Founders was immortal and might well still be walking around wasn't a matter of much interest at all. "There were a few things that were written about him at the time that suggest as much. Well, either he was a metamorph or a _very_ convincing transvestite, I guess."

Hermione was assaulted with a mental image of Voldemort in a flower-patterned sundress, and felt herself flush. (That look Harry gave her, as though she'd let it slip enough that he'd seen it too, didn't help.)

"But, when the House of Slytherin died out in the Sixteenth Century, an unknown woman appeared in the middle of the floor, while the Wizengamot was debating who had the best claim to inherit the title, and cursed the _fuck_ out of the family's seat, lectured at the assembled Lords for a bit, then disappeared. Nobody can crack it, they had to rebuild the Hall _around_ the thing. Nobody's entirely certain who the woman was, but by the way she was talking the smart money is on Salazar Slytherin himself. Er, herself? You know what I mean."

"So, _the_ Slytherin is still around somewhere."

"Maybe? That was probably him who cursed the seat, but that was four hundred years ago, he might have died since then, who knows. I would say we could ask Shirazi — if he's still alive, she must have contacted him somehow for permission to use the name — but I doubt she'd tell us."

That was...a weird thought. Hermione knew the historical Slytherin hadn't _actually_ been the genocidal maniac people remembered him as these days, but still...

While she and Lyra had been talking about that, Zabini had finally gotten control of the room again. There was an odd look about her, almost anxious, an unpleasant sort of anticipation. Her voice somewhat flatter than before, she said, "There is one last member of our panel of judges, who most will consider quite...controversial. She is another metamorph, though somewhat younger than Slytherin, I believe, who goes by the name Sarah Selwyn. She is, I am told, a British expatriate, in some way connected to the Noble House of Selwyn, though not directly tied to it — it is my understanding that she predates the formalisation of the family in the Fifteenth Century, so it wasn't her name at birth, but she uses it now as a matter of convenience. Since leaving Britain, Professor Selwyn has drifted across Europe and the Near East, eventually finding herself in the Americas. Not long afterward, she joined with the community of European refugees who would, in time, organise themselves as the Miskatonic Valley—"

That was about as much as Hermione heard. The explosion of conversation between the students washed out whatever might have come after that. Even the professors were participating, some jumping to their feet to question Zabini, Dumbledore and Crouch approaching her, both pale-faced and, by their postures, yelling at Zabini a bit.

While this was probably a more dramatic reaction than was entirely justified, Hermione couldn't say she was surprised. The Miskatonic Valley Magical Cooperative had a very..._controversial_ reputation, in Britain — throughout the ICW, for that matter. The Western opinion of the institution went all the way back to a time before it'd even technically existed, to events in the latter part of the 17th Century, the final years before the imposition of Secrecy on the magical world.

The mages' decision to isolate themselves from the rest of the world entirely had been made by Europeans and East Asians (particularly the Chinese), and it hadn't been a particularly popular one. Many mages had rejected the dictates of their rulers, a disagreement that escalated into revolts and even civil wars, as the earliest anti-Statutarians were suppressed, in some cases viciously. There had even been wars _between_ magical nations, as pro-Secrecy states forced those who opposed it into compliance. These anti-Secrecy states were mostly focused in a band stretching from the Congo Basin, into the African Great Lakes, up the Nile, throughout the Near East and over into Persia, Bactria, and the Indian subcontinent, including some of the oldest magical cultures in all the world — Egypt, Persia, various Indian kingdoms Hermione was less familiar with — and some of the most populous. The conflict ravaged this area of the world, resulting in thousands upon thousands of deaths, the region still harbouring lingering anti-Statutarian sentiment to this day — though, perhaps, somewhat moderated by the hard fundamentalist swing taken up by certain Islamicists in recent generations, many were concerned that would make re-integration with their non-magical cousins far more difficult.

The conflict had, perhaps, been at its worst in the Americas. The American Natives, who had formed their own advanced civilisations long before the arrival of Europeans in the 16th Century, had already had a complicated relationship with the rest of the world by the time Secrecy came around. European mages did support their non-magical cousins in their empire-making, which obviously soured relations with outsiders; opinion on Asians was _somewhat_ better, since their contact had been minor up to that point, sparse trade along the west coast mostly by enterprising mages. Unlike in most of the rest of the world, there had been no commonly-recognised international diplomatic structure to make a decision on Secrecy one way or the other — by the time the Statute came around, the Americas had been practically a post-apocalyptic hellscape. By some estimates, _over ninety per cent_ of the native population had been wiped out by European diseases in the first century after contact, a disaster of proportions simply unprecedented in all of human history. The death toll among the mages was somewhat lower, but had still been devastating, the Americans far less organised than the Europeans and Asians as a result.

So, they thought forcing the peoples of the New World into compliance with Secrecy would be easy. They were very, _very_ wrong.

The war the Europeans and the Chinese had prosecuted against the Americans was long, and bloody, and _brutal_ — it wasn't at all unusual for American villages to be completely exterminated, every single resident murdered, or for entire teams of Old World warmages, backed up with their best curse-breakers to deal with the strange American wards, to leave in search of an American settlement only to disappear and never be heard from again. Countless people died, on both sides, but while the Americans did manage to resist being conquered the horrible toll of the war did eventually force them to come to the table, and they had, in the end, adopted the Statute of Secrecy. But there was still a great deal of bitterness over it, especially given the fate of their non-magical cousins in the centuries since, most modern American nations essentially promoting anti-Statutarianism as official policy to this day.

Over the course of the fighting over the Statute, both in the Old and the New World, hundreds of defectors from European and Asian nations found their way to the Americas. Many of them ended up joining the Americans in their fight against the Statute, advising the Natives on how to counter European and Asian magics, which had been largely alien to them at the time. In the aftermath of Secrecy, many anti-Statutarians from all over the world found their way to the Americas, forming little pockets of Old World influence within a civilisation that was even now, on the magical side, still mostly dominated by Natives.

One such community formed along the Miskatonic River, somewhere in New England — Lovecraft put it in Massachusetts, but Hermione wasn't certain precisely where the real-world Miskatonic was located. The initial group were mostly defectors from the forces sent to subjugate the Natives, curse-breakers and ward-crafters and warmages. As more refugees arrived, their little community attracted those of a more academic bent, alchemists and enchanters and artificers and magical theorists. The residents organised, and in 1732 went to the local American mages, offering their services in understanding (and countering) Western magic — the Americans agreed, and the Miskatonic Valley Magical Cooperative was born.

Now, in the immediate aftermath of the Statute, most Western nations had started getting more serious about controlling the proliferation of the more unsavoury sorts of magic. _Miskatonic_, however, had been founded on a mandate to explore _all_ of Western magic, with the goal of preparing their American allies to deal with a potential second war — so these laws against the Dark Arts, naturally, were never adopted in Miskatonic. In fact, many practitioners of the Dark Arts who had to flee their own countries as the local authorities turned against them found their way to Miskatonic, welcomed by the locals and protected against extradition by the American authorities.

Hermione knew by now Miskatonic's reputation as a refuge of terrible evil dark mages doing terrible evil things was not..._entirely_ accurate. _All_ magics were studied and taught in the Miskatonic Valley, they had a magical school much like any other — though they also had the equivalent of a Mastery programme, so more like Beauxbatons than Hogwarts. (And they were _also_ a muggle university, of course, it was a large and complicated institution.) They simply didn't _restrict_ what sort of research people were allowed to do. Well, even that wasn't _entirely_ true — the American authorities did set ground rules, mostly involving not using their citizens as test subjects and not causing too much destruction or starting a war or something, but as long as they didn't offend their patrons they could do as they liked. _Some_ of the projects Miskatonic was involved in were absolutely _horrendous_...

...but they _also_ did very important, influential work, that couldn't be denied either. And, when she thought about it, Hermione could understand why the Americans might find European moralising about some of the subjects Miskatonic taught and the experiments they conducted to be almost hilariously hypocritical. It _was_ important to remember that the Americans' first major contact with Western magic had been foreigners coming in and using it to dominate and murder their people — and that had been done _before_ modern regulations against the Dark Arts, so Hermione didn't doubt some seriously vile shite had been used against the Americans. When she thought about it, the Americans attempting to ensure they were prepared should they ever have to face that sort of assault again made perfect sense.

Miskatonic did do a lot of problematic research, yes. A lot of the people there were quite awful, yes. But crazy Dark Arts wasn't _all_ they did, not by a long shot, and not _all_ of their people were involved in the worse aspects — it was a legitimate educational institution over there, after all, they had all sorts. The European impression they were all insane Dark Arts users was a bit absurd, considering the University also had _literal muggles_ on the staff. Such an intense reaction to Miskatonic sending someone wasn't entirely justified.

Though, Hermione would admit, even she was a bit...leery. She'd read issues of the _Árthra_, the journal Miskatonic published, so some might well consider her a sort of collaborator, and even _she_ was uncomfortable with the idea of one of their researchers being around! Especially given this Sarah Selwyn's particular history, that did sort of make it _more_ likely she'd be one of the problematic ones...

Yes, Hermione did think this horrified outcry was a bit much, but she could sort of understand where they were coming from.

Though, she did have another question for Lyra. "I thought you said Miskatonic was sending Angel Black." If they had picked someone else, Hermione was on board for that — she hadn't been able to find much about this Angel Black person, but what little she had was not encouraging.

Lyra shrugged. "Angel _is_ part of their delegation, I'm sure, but maybe they decided to pick someone else for the top name. Someone less, you know, Black."

And that was Lyra suggesting the Blacks were even a bit much for _Miskatonic_. Hermione wondered if she realised how funny that was. (Though, it was also a little reassuring, when she thought about it.)

It took some minutes for Zabini to get control of the room again — it didn't help that Dumbledore and Crouch were obviously _very_ unhappy with her, she needed to shake them before she could even attempt to address the students again. Eventually, with the assistance of magic (an amplification spell on her own voice, a slew of palings and charms from Babbling and Snape Hermione didn't even recognise), she did finally manage it. "I know many of you find the idea of a professor from Miskatonic coming to Hogwarts concerning, but Professor Selwyn herself is not especially threatening. From what I am told, she is a master wardcrafter, with further specialties in mind magic, blood magic, and necromancy, but, _but_," she stressed, raising her voice a bit over a renewed bout of whispering, "she is mostly concerned with adapting these specialities toward protective magics and healing. I have spoken with her briefly, and she seemed nice enough.

"She will be accompanied by her partner, one Angel Black—" Oh, there it was. "—who is...perhaps rather closer to what you might expect of a Miskatonic researcher. _However_, everyone who comes to Hogwarts will be expected to observe ICW statutes for the duration of the Tournament, an arrangement Madam Black has agreed to abide by. You are in no particular danger from our guests from Miskatonic, no more than any of the others. In any case, I am certain they will be watched very closely for as long as they are here," she finished, with a peculiar note of irony on her voice. Yeah, Hermione didn't doubt the staff and security provided by the Ministry would _definitely_ be keeping an eye on the delegation from Miskatonic, they wouldn't need to be told to do it.

Again, Hermione found herself turning to Lyra. "By _partner_, does she mean...?" One of Lyra's eyebrows ticked up in clear confusion. "Like, er... It's a euphemism, on the muggle side, for long-term same-sex couples." Come to think of it, she wasn't certain she'd ever heard the word used that way by mages — despite visible same-sex couples being around, it wasn't as big a deal over here — so Lyra not initially picking up on what she meant made sense.

"Oh, no, she probably means in a professional sense. Angel is a black mage under the Covenant, like me — I doubt she gets people any better than I do. Probably worse, actually, she's closer to the Dark than I am."

Oh, _great_, that was going to be fun...

Hermione shook off that _dreadful_ thought in time to listen to Zabini, finally moving on after letting the students work out their nervousness some more. "However, the delegations from the schools and on our panel of judges are not the only guests we will have this year. Many of you are, perhaps, not aware of this, but the mages of these islands are required by treaty to keep our sister muggle governments informed on matters of domestic and international importance. There is a tricky little passage in the Treaty of Anglesey in particular that requires the Wizengamot to invite them to send observers to any event of significant diplomatic importance. You may remember the recent riot at the World Cup was, at least partially, composed of people attempting to murder Michael Cavan, an important figure in the muggle government of Ireland — he was invited to the World Cup in the first place due to this clause in the Treaty of Anglesey."

Hermione snorted. _That_ was a charitable way of putting it — from what she'd heard, the Ministry had, in fact, _forgotten_ to invite the Irish, despite their treaty obligation to do so. (Apparently they _had_ sent an invitation to Whitehall, but the UK had elected not to send anyone.) Once Michael Cavan, the Labour leader in Ireland's parliament and the current Tánaiste — Hermione had heard of him before, her parents were fans — had realised just how he'd been snubbed, he'd called up Saoirse Ghaelach — basically, as Hermione understood it, _the magical IRA_ — and shown up on his own. Without an invitation, he'd pretty much just turned up and dared the people running the thing to tell him to leave.

There were, after all, reasons her parents liked him.

"Respecting this treaty with our non-magical neighbours, invitations to send observers to the event have been sent to two of the major governments we share lands with — the Republic of France was not invited, as a result of other agreements they are only to be involved in matters solely concerning Brittany." Oh, Hermione hadn't even realised the French government might have been invited, sometimes she entirely forgot Bretagne was actually part of Britain on the magical side..._sort of_, it was complicated. "Both of whom have accepted, and will be sending delegations for the duration. Before they arrive, however, there are a few matters I would like to take the time to explain.

"One of the delegations we will be hosting here will be representing the Republic of Ireland. It is important to note, concerning the muggles of our islands, that they are no longer all one nation. There was a nationalist revolution in muggle Ireland, followed by a very complicated civil war — and this was, in historical terms, _very_ recent, the major events taking place in the early decades of this century, with consequences that are still controversial points of political contention to this day. The Republic of Ireland is an independent country, consisting of the entirety of Munster, Leinster, and Connacht — along with small portions of Ulster, though the majority is still controlled by the British — and they are quite sensitive to any suggestion they are not their own nation. Our Irish guests will likely take offence to any suggestion they are British, or subjects of the muggle English queen, so, should you ever speak to any of them, I would take care to avoid doing so."

Slightly behind Zabini and to her right, Crouch shot the back of her head a cold, unpleasant glare.

"The muggle Irish delegation will be lead by Michael Cavan himself, who is a member of the leadership of the _Dáil Éireann_, a body analogous to our Wizengamot, and also Minister for Foreign Affairs, a position more or less equivalent to that of Director Crouch here," she finished, turning to give him a graceful nod — Crouch's glare vanished while she was facing him, then returned the second her back was to him again. "His proper title is _tánaiste_, but _Mister Cavan_ or _hey you_ will do in a pinch." A wave of uncertain giggles swept over the room. "Mister Cavan's duties leave him very little free time, so while he will certainly be in attendance for the major events of the Tournament he will be away from the castle most of the year, leaving a delegation of subordinates from his office behind in his place.

"So far as dealing with our Irish guests goes, I wouldn't worry about being overly formal with them. I am familiar with Mister Cavan myself, professionally, and while I would avoid being too directly offensive, the man does have a sense of humour — he can take a joke, and isn't likely to take a little rudeness personally. For the duration of their stay, the Irish will take up residence in rooms set aside for them in the north wing. I recommend staying well away from them if you are not explicitly invited. Our non-magical cousins are aware many mages aren't particularly welcoming to their people—" That was a _very_ charitable way to say some mages were genocidally racist... "—and they are taking their security very seriously — Saoirse Ghaelach will be providing that security themselves, personally lead by Fionn Ingham, Ciarán Ó Báinfhéigh, and Síomha Ní Ailbhe. I would advise you avoid giving them any reason to think you are a threat to their charges."

Zabini had to break again, as the students muttered among themselves — not just the students, Hermione noticed certain of the staff looked less than pleased, _especially_ Dumbledore. Which was sort of understandable, Hermione had just thought of Saoirse as the magical IRA a couple minutes ago. Though, if she were being entirely honest, she realised that wasn't _quite_ fair. Saoirse hadn't ever been accused of being involved in the sort of violence the Provisional IRA was infamous for these days. Sinn Féin was probably a better comparison...

...though that militia Saoirse had started up recently _did_ sound sort of scary to Hermione. Especially since there were British mages who were talking about organising to counter them. It didn't look _that_ bad yet, Northern Ireland was still a _lot_ worse, but the way the Gaelic and British nationalists talked sometimes was making her a bit nervous.

"The last of our important guests," Zabini pressed on, raising her voice over the last few whispers, "is leading the delegation from the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. A number of officials with the Foriegn and Commonwealth Office will be arriving tomorrow, though I do not believe the Foreign Secretary himself is expected to make the trip. The British delegation will be housed in the east wing, and will also be bringing their own security, so, again, I recommend not making a nuisance of yourselves. However, it is the leader of this delegation who represents a...complication.

"For the duration of the Tournament, Hogwarts will be hosting Her Majesty Victoria the Second, by the Grace of God of the United Kingdom and—" It sounded like Zabini intended to use the Queen's full style, but Hermione didn't hear any more than that — there was quite a bit of noise at _that_ announcement, enough Zabini's voice was drowned out entirely.

Noise disproportionately, Hermione noticed, from muggleborns, but that wasn't really a shock. Hermione had been somewhat surprised when she realised magical Britain didn't actually recognise the Queen at all — she meant, the Wizengamot considered the Crown an _ally_, but not their _sovereign_, didn't recognise the Queen as having any authority over them. And that wasn't just a post-Statute thing, it'd always been that way. The political situation on the Isles had always been complicated, especially since there had been a significant number of noble families who held seats on the Wizengamot but _also_ held titles in England or other, now defunct kingdoms, so _also_ owed fealty to an outside king. Medieval history was a confusing morass, with all the competing kingdoms and split loyalties going on, it was difficult just to keep track of who was allied with—

Hermione blinked.

The...

The Queen was coming to Hogwarts.

The _Queen_ was coming to _her school_.

And she would, apparently, be staying here _for months_.

Oh fuck, Hermione had _no_ idea how to react to that...

"Er, Maïa? You okay?"

"I'm fine." It was possible her voice came out rather higher than it should have, Hermione tried not to feel too self-conscious. "I just, I— I didn't realise _the Queen_ was coming _to Hogwarts_."

Lyra shrugged. _Shrugged!_ "Why wouldn't she? I'm pretty sure the local kings always came to the Triwizard Tournaments. For the opening and closing events, at least, and since the monarch these days hardly has anything to do anymore, I'm not surprised she's sticking around for a while."

"I guess I just— I didn't realise she'd be here, _for months_, that's all." With how long she'd be here, and how very small the school was, Hermione realised it was almost inevitable that she'd be _meeting the Queen_ this year, however briefly.

Hermione had seen the Queen in person, _once_, from a distance, though she could barely remember it. They'd gone to Westminster for the coronation — they did live in Oxford, London was only a short train hop away — and that had been, what, a little over ten years ago now? Hermione would have been four, probably. She vaguely remembered being carried on Dad's shoulders in the middle of an enormous, noisy crowd, looking up at a balcony where the whole royal family was standing, the newly-crowned Queen in the middle. She'd been tiny from that distance, Hermione had hardly been able to make her out — but she'd be _at Hogwarts_, for the _rest of the year_...

It was rather warm, all of a sudden. Was she the only one who felt warm? That was uncomfortable.

And Lyra still seemed completely unimpressed, which, of _course_ she was, this was _Lyra_. "I don't see what the big deal is. Vicky isn't _that_ interesting. It _is_ Vicky, right?"

It took Hermione a few seconds to find her voice. "_Vicky?!_"

Lyra tipped in her seat a little, leaning away from Hermione, a look of mild surprise on her face — okay, maybe that had been a bit louder than necessary, but her girlfriend had just called the Queen _Vicky_. "Um, sure? I tagged along with my Uncle Draco to the Palace once — he was a Black Cloak, you know, he met with the royal family occasionally. That would have been in...Fifty-Nine or Sixty, I think?"

Hermione nearly yelled at Lyra for talking about being around in the 1950s before realising her privacy spells were still up, right. "You've met the Queen before."

"Sure. Well, it was _Princess_ Vicky then, obviously, but yes. At least, I'm assuming this _Queen_ Victoria is the same person, I don't actually know for certain, never checked."

"Yes. Yes, she is."

"Right. I did talk to her for a while, actually — Uncle Draco made Vicky play chess with me so I wouldn't make a nuisance of myself while he was trying to talk to the King."

Once again, it took Hermione a couple seconds to process that. "You...played chess. With the Queen."

Lyra still seemed faintly confused over Hermione lingering on this, but she nodded. "Yep. She wasn't bad, either — I mean, I still won, obviously, but she did better than most people around my age. She's like, what, two or three years older than me, I think? Actually forced a stalemate once, so, yeah, not bad. And, she's not as boring as most people, but I still don't see what the big deal is."

...

Nope. Hermione had no idea what to do with this. She wasn't touching it.

Zabini was still talking, repeating the same warnings she'd given about the Irish, to stay away from the rooms the British delegation would be taking over in the east wing, to not make nuisances of themselves or give their security any reason at all to suspect they were a threat. The English Crown, Hermione knew, had had an order of magical guardsmen going back literally as long as it had existed, and it was still around in the modern day. Zabini made an explicit comparison to the now defunct but still famously competent Black Cloaks — the first members of the office that would, in time, become the Black Cloaks had in fact been pulled from the personal guards of George II, and the two organisations had traded members back and forth throughout the entire span of their shared existence — and at least two of their current members actually _had_ been Black Cloaks themselves back in the day, among the very few survivors of Grindelwald's campaign of elimination (suggesting they were _especially_ good at their jobs). They took their duties _very_ seriously and messing with them was a very, _very_ bad idea.

Lyra looked ecstatic at the news there would be Black Cloaks, or at least people who were one small step removed from proper Black Cloaks, in the castle for the rest of term — and she wasn't the only one, there were childish grins and excited whisperings all over the room. Which, Hermione would say that was _very_ silly, but she knew the reputation Black Cloaks had in magical Britain by now: they'd ended up as the heroes in a _lot_ of recent fiction, their martyrdom in Grindelwald's war almost entirely erasing their older vilification as blood-thirsty muggle-loving traitors. (Their loyalty had been solely invested in a muggle king after all.) Which was itself ridiculous, but Hermione had _also_ learned by now just how quickly public opinion could change in magical Britain — Harry's seemed to flip back and forth month to month, for an extreme example — she mostly just found this sort of thing exasperating by now.

Zabini then went on for rather longer than was probably necessary about exactly how they should behave while the royals were around. Unlike Michael Cavan, who Zabini believed would brush off all but the most extreme rudeness, they would need to show a much greater degree of respect toward Her Majesty. After all, Zabini explained, the modern erosion of the explicit power held by the sovereign notwithstanding, she was Queen to literally 115 _million_ people — which was an absolutely absurd number to mages, she doubted there were a hundred million mages in all of Europe. (It was a _slightly_ absurd number to Hermione, since the population of the UK was only about 58 million, Zabini must be counting the whole Commonwealth.) In her person, Victoria II also represented one of their country's most important allies — _obviously_, they shared most of their territory with the UK — and an ancient institution that had been massively important in their own history since practically the beginning. So, obviously, some significant degree of respect was called for, if the children did something to seriously offend the UK for no good reason, well, that wouldn't be good for anyone, would it?

Zabini was probably finishing up, with a last stern reminder they were expected to be on their _absolute best behaviour_ involving Her Majesty, when there was another interruption. From the direction of the Entrance Hall, Hermione recognised the low grinding and creaking of the huge main doors into the castle opening. Clearly hearing the same thing, Zabini's voice went slightly absent, then cutting off instantly when a trio of people stepped into the room.

The three of them were, together, some of the strangest people Hermione had ever seen. Or at least in the context of Hogwarts — one of them, a middle-aged man in a meticulously proper muggle suit, a red sash around his middle suggesting he was someone rather important (though Hermione didn't recognise him at first glance, probably a minister of state with the Foreign Office or something), actually looked rather ordinary, she'd seen people dressed like that attending formal events on the television many times, but seeing one _at Hogwarts_ was jarring. The other two men were _clearly_ mages, in dueling leathers coloured black and red and gold, heavy dark cloaks fluttering dramatically in their wakes.

But they were also _heavily_ armed, almost ridiculously so. There were wands, of course — Hermione caught hints of holsters on both wrists, and she thought the man in the rear had another one built into the inside of his left boot — and there were also little narrow metal instruments peeking out from their belts — Hermione suspected those were drop-keys, a tool designed to assist curse-breakers in cracking wards. They were also both carrying _firearms_, at least one pistol each openly hanging at their right hip, but judging by the subtle bulges the one in the rear could easily have three, which was _completely_ absurd, most mages Hermione had spoken to hardly even knew what firearms _were_. And, perhaps most distractingly, the one in the lead _was wearing a sword_ — obviously magically-made, the metal sparkling red and gold in the sunlight, the reflections warping slightly from the power of the enchantments in the thing — which was, just, the silliest thing Hermione had ever seen, mages hadn't made a habit of carrying swords since before the Statute, and even back then it had never been common, they _had bloody wands_, what the hell...

Hermione didn't need anyone to say anything to know those two men were some of the Queen's magical guardsmen. If the timing hadn't been enough, the combination of the colour scheme and their _completely over-the-top_ magical–muggle arms would have been a dead giveaway.

The three paced down the Hall, between the central and Ravenclaw tables, seemingly paying the storm of whispering following them no mind — though, the presumably muggle man did at least seem to notice their audience was there, smiling and nodding to particular students now and again. Zabini stepped down from the slightly raised platform under the high table to meet them, their muttered conversation covered up by the continued chatter from the students. After a few seconds she popped back up, along with their three guests, who set into introducing themselves to the staff, starting with Dumbledore and moving on to the Heads of Houses.

While they did that, Zabini addressed the room again — even from a distance, her face looked slightly strained. "It seems that Her Majesty's party is running somewhat ahead of schedule. They were not expected until three-thirty this afternoon, but I have just been informed that they are making their way here from Hogsmeade station right now. If you would please—" Zabini was, once again, drowned out by an outpouring of noise from the students, it took a couple moments and more noises from wands for her to be heard again.

The entire population of the school was quickly pushed out of the Great Hall, a chaotic, cacophonous mess of humanity funnelling into the Entrance Hall. In the press, Lyra hooked her arm around Hermione's, which was probably a good thing, Hermione was feeling oddly warm and numb. (_The Queen_ was coming _to Hogwarts_.) While the students milled in the Entrance Hall, the staff extracted themselves, filtering out toward the front doors. Hermione couldn't see from here, but it looked like they — plus the Head Boy and Girl, who they'd managed to track down at some point — were leaving to wait outside, to greet the Queen and her people on the doorstep. There was a moment of confusion, the students all chattering noisily at each other, swirling around with no real order, until—

A wave of tingling magic swept over the room, leaving almost tangible quiet in its wake — a silencing charm, a powerful one. "If everyone would move toward the sides of the room, please."

There was a moment of silent tension before people started moving again, the crowd pressing themselves away somewhat, opening up a corridor of empty space in the middle of the Hall. (If the Entrance Hall weren't so ridiculously large, and the student body so relatively small, fitting them all in here at once might not have been possible.) Lyra, still guiding Hermione by the arm, managed to claim a spot at the front edge of the crowd, only a few metres from the glimmering granite of the Grand Staircase.

Now that there weren't so many people in the way, Hermione could see the one who'd spoken (and presumably silenced the crowd), was one of the guards, the one with the sword. He waited until they were mostly settled to the sides before speaking again, in a low, casual pitch, quiet enough some magic was probably getting it to their ears in the first place (though, the students being magically silenced also helped). "Good afternoon, students of Hogwarts. I do apologise for the surprise — we managed to make the trip north rather more quickly than we anticipated."

Lyra let out a disbelieving snort, drawing Hermione's thoughts to the claim. Yeah, Lyra was probably right to doubt it — Hermione wouldn't be surprised if the Queen had intentionally arrived early to tweak Dumbledore's (and the Ministry's) nose a bit. Arriving early, after all, forced the habitually self-righteous mages to scramble to welcome her, both putting them off balance and making a point. With how the magical government had treated their non-magical counterparts over the last century or so, taking the opportunity to mess with them a little bit seemed like exactly the sort of thing the Queen might do — she was known for subtle plays like that, after all.

"I am Sir William Langley, Knight Commander of the Royal Victorian Order and Captain of the Guard." Hermione twitched at the name — not the title, that she might have expected, but the name _Langley_. It could be a coincidence, it wasn't an _unusual_ name, but on the magical side it happened to be one of the Most Ancient Houses, had been defunct since...the 17th Century, she thought they might have been one of the families exterminated in the war against the Cromwells. He did have a slightly peculiar accent, but it didn't sound like the purebloods', exactly, Hermione couldn't quite place it. She shot a quick glance at Lyra, but she looked just as uncertain as Hermione was. "Her Majesty will be arriving in a few minutes. After speaking with the Chief Warlock, the Directors Crouch and Zabini, and your professors, she will be proceeding directly to her rooms in the east wing until dinner, though she may linger here a moment.

"I would ask you to remain behind these lines." The man flicked his fingers in an almost casual gesture, and the air snapped with magic, strips of moody red-purple light appeared on the tile of the floor an instant later, marking out a corridor from the front doors to the Grand Staircase. Several students on the wrong side of the lines let out squeaks of surprise — the first noise anyone had made for some seconds now, she hadn't realised the silencing was gone — and shuffled around a bit to squeeze in. "However, I do understand if, in the moment, you find yourselves pressing in a bit. If that happens, that is alright, but my men will stop you from getting too close to Her Majesty. Consider this fair warning: any magic cast directly toward the Queen will be considered a threat, and we will respond accordingly." The man glanced over his shoulder toward the front doors. "Any questions?"

From somewhere across the room, someone yelled. "Are you one of _the_ Langleys?"

"Are you the Sir William who caught that stalker?" Hermione had heard about that, the rather dramatic capture of someone trying to sneak into the Queen's residence at Windsor Castle had been in the news a few years ago, but she hadn't remembered any of the names involved.

"I thought the Langleys were all dead..."

Looking slightly exasperated, Sir William flicked his fingers again, another silencing falling over the room. "I'm afraid I can't comment on any of those matters. If you'll excuse me." With a dramatic swirl of his cloak, he turned on his heel, and vanished through the front door outside.

He was hardly gone for a second when Lyra leaned in to mutter, "He probably _is_ a Langley. I think he's a metamorph."

"How can you tell?" Hermione didn't think metamorphs looked any different from normal people, at least until they changed something right out in the open. Even detecting them magically was very, very difficult.

In fact, Hermione had learned that security measures against metamorphs usually involved misting throughout a room minor transfigurative potions, one of the ones metamorphs reacted badly too but in a low enough dose the effect on normal people was negligible. Which, depending on the potion, could easily result in the death of the metamorph, especially if they weren't found right away, but people who were concerned enough about thieves or assassins to bother with such complicated security usually considered that risk acceptable. The point was, they weren't distinct enough from normal people to specifically ward against, they were almost impossible to identify _without_ doing something extreme that might accidentally kill them.

(It was funny the things she picked up, spending all her free time with someone who'd been personally trained by probably the most famous cursebreaker of the 20th Century.)

"Other than how stupid powerful he obviously is?" Lyra shrugged. "I can't. Just a guess."

That was a point. People did grow more magically powerful as they aged (technically, as they _used magic_, but it was effectively the same thing), so metamorphs were absurdly overpowered just by nature — that was a hell of a silencing he'd been throwing around, with no sign of effort at all, and he hadn't even drawn his wand to do it. Since he was also calling himself _Langley_, a magical family that had died out about three hundred years ago now, that he was a metamorph wasn't a bad guess.

Though, if he _was_ a Langley, and had been around back when the family had gone extinct, that raised...complications. The Langleys were one of the magical families that had been killed off during the British Civil Wars and the Protectorate, and there had been a few odd shifts in the monarchy over the few centuries since then. If this Langley were one of _the_ Langleys, he would have grown up when the _Stuart_ kings were still around and, well, they weren't anymore. Due to a combination of factors — multiple civil wars, the Glorious Revolution, the Act of Settlement 1701, complicated intermarriages with Continental families — the current royal family had originally been _German_ nobility, had very little to do with the old Stuarts Sir William would have attached himself to, if he really had been around that long. Really, with everything that had happened in the time since, it wouldn't make any sense at all to expect a commitment made to, say, Charles I, to carry all the way through the centuries to the modern day with—

Hermione froze. She and Lyra were standing at the very front of the crowd, just next to the Grand Staircase. Clearly visible.

"Oh, _shite_..."

Lyra raised an eyebrow at her. "You okay there, Maïa?"

"I just realised— I didn't know _the Queen_ would be coming!"

"No? And...?"

"Lyra, I'm _wearing pyjamas_." It was the bloody _weekend_, she hadn't expected to need to be presentable, she hadn't seen any reason to bother with anything more formal than flannel pyjama bottoms and a bloody knitted jumper. And her hair was probably a _mess_, she'd barely touched it this morning, just quickly tied it back out of the way, she was _not_ in any state to be—

"You're being very silly, you know."

"_Not_ helping, Lyra." Hermione took a moment to breathe, which wasn't very easy, she was feeling weirdly hot and twitchy. (Though Lyra was right, she was being _very_ silly, what did it matter, really.) "I don't suppose you could pop me up to our room so I can change." Lyra had never pulled her through shadows before, and it _did_ sound unpleasant, but...

"Um, I could, I guess, but there probably isn't time for it. I think Vicky's going to be here any minute now."

Dammit, why didn't she— Okay, stop being silly, it was fine. Just...don't think about it. Yes. That would be fine. It wasn't like she had any _reason_ to be embarrassed, the Queen would hardly be paying any special attention to her, it was fine. It was fine.

Thankfully (or perhaps unfortunately), Hermione didn't have very long to fret over it. Probably only a couple minutes later — the Great Hall filled with the low noise of hundreds of students lowly muttering with their neighbours, restlessly shuffling in place — people were walking through the huge double doors. There were more of the very odd-looking guards, rather more than Hermione thought could possibly be necessary, mixed in with the professors several people in formal dress she assumed were from the Foreign Office or something. Quite a few more people than she'd expected just in general, but when she thought about it that did make sense — they weren't just here to meet the _Hogwarts staff_, after all, there would be delegations from Ireland and the ICW here as well, she wouldn't be surprised if they were hoping to get some actual work done under the table as long as they were here. But she didn't pay all those people very much mind at all.

Because at the front of the pack, arm in arm with Dumbledore, was the bloody _Queen_ of the fucking _United Kingdom_. Just...right there. It was slightly surreal, if she was being honest.

Even if she didn't quite look like herself, at the moment. Hermione had seen the Queen before, of course, on television — and on currency dating to the last ten years or so, obviously — and... Well, it seemed somehow odd to say, but she had always struck Hermione as very plain — slightly dour-looking, long-faced and solemn, but otherwise unremarkable. If she'd passed her on the street (and hadn't realised _she was the bloody Queen_), she probably wouldn't give her a second glance. It helped that she'd never really been one for finery, coming off strangely modest for someone who was, well, _obscenely_ wealthy. But now...

The only explanation was that she'd decided to dress like a mage, because she could probably pass as one. Just looked like... Well, not _dueling_ clothes, exactly, but those sort of _fake_ dueling clothes — trousers and tunic in the proper cut, but a shimmer to the cloth (black accented with royal red and gold) that hinted at silk, which wasn't really combat-appropriate. Though, it wasn't quite right for magical dress either. The cloak was odd, tilted at a peculiar angle, clasped over one shoulder at a band of silverish metal dotted with black and blue gemstones, the cloak itself a complicated mix of too many colours, obviously meant to represent _something_, but Hermione couldn't figure out what it was.

Some of the students, obviously, did. Around the significant portion of the audience who just stood quietly staring — probably muggleborns who, like Hermione, weren't entirely sure what they were supposed to be doing with themselves right now, and so stood in anxious silence — there was a tense storm of whispering, sounding surprised, and confused, and almost...annoyed?

Leaning slightly closer to Lyra, pitching her voice as low as she could, Hermione asked, "What is it? Is something wrong?"

There was a faint smirk on Lyra's lips. "Apparently, Vicky decided to come to Hogwarts dressed up as a Lady Protector."

Hermione blinked. _Oh_.

The Lord (or Lady) Protector was a Wizengamot office that was only filled during times of war and crisis. The practice dated to an older tradition when, against some outside threat, old Celtic clans would unify and select a warleader from among their own number, dissolving again to the _status quo ante_ once the threat was dealt with. For the duration of the emergency, the deliberative process of the Wizengamot was steeply streamlined, and significant executive power was invested in the Lord Protector alone, who replaced the Chief Warlock but had powers _far_ more extensive. Once the emergency was taken care of, the Lord Protector surrendered their powers, a new Chief Warlock was selected, and the Wizengamot resumed ordinary business.

The whole thing reminded Hermione very much of the dictators of the Roman Republic — complete with later historical events entirely poisoning the office in public perception, leading to new ones no longer being appointed. In the case of magical Britain, that Lady Protector had been Frances Cromwell, who essentially conquered the magical side of the country, illegitimately claiming the title for herself. (She hadn't been the first to claim the title without affirmation by the Wizengamot, but she _was_ the only one to succeed in actually taking over the country.) The war between Cromwell and the Wizengamot in exile — she'd "dissolved" the traditional Wizengamot and replaced it with her own Senate, long story — had been absolutely devastating. In the centuries afterward, even when they would otherwise have had very good reason to, the Wizengamot had never selected a Lord Protector, the office was just too politically toxic.

(In a weird way, magical Britain couldn't declare war: the legal process _required_ selecting a Lord Protector, which they simply weren't going to do. Which made dealing with certain things rather more difficult — like, oh, genocidal terrorists out to overthrow the government, for example. It was very silly.)

Hermione wasn't certain exactly what part of that outfit was supposed to be particularly...Lady Protector-ish, but it couldn't possibly be by accident. It would have to be intended as a message...though Hermione also wasn't certain exactly what that message was supposed to be. The truth of the matter was somewhat more complicated than it was usually depicted, but Cromwell was almost universally considered to be the greatest villain in all of magical British history — Hermione could only assume whatever message the Queen was intending to get across was an inflammatory one.

Privately going off on that tangent, Hermione had managed to get distracted by her own thoughts long enough the Queen had crossed much of the room, now not so far from the Grand Staircase — and, so, not far from Hermione either. Not _close_, exactly, since the Entrance Hall was bloody huge, but it couldn't be a dozen metres, and...

Hermione felt a little light-headed. Was it just her, or was it rather warm in here? And the bloody front doors were open too...

The Queen and Dumbledore were talking, and there was some kind of amplification charm on their voices, so despite their low, casual tone Hermione could hear them. Not that it seemed to be anything important, chatting on about polite nonsense to do with the school, whatever. They were nearly at the Grand Staircase when the Queen halted, quite nearly jerking Dumbledore to a stop, the faint frown that had been on her face becoming rather more obvious. "Sir William?"

The same man from before, mostly identifiable by the sword at his hip — his features were almost suspiciously bland and unremarkable, enough Hermione assumed he'd somehow made himself nondescript on purpose — was immediately looming over the Queen's shoulder, appearing out of nowhere, yet somehow so smoothly he might have been there the whole time. He leaned in close (closer than Hermione thought could be entirely appropriate, in fact, but perhaps being her primary bodyguard came with privileges), and they had a brief, whispered conversation. Interestingly, the amplification charm had cut off, Hermione couldn't hear anything. The Queen had covered her lips with her free hand before speaking to him, and Hermione found himself wondering if it was possible to create an amplification charm that could be freely modulated like that, or if whoever it was who'd cast it had simply responded to the signal.

Whatever, the amplification picked up again the second the Queen turned back to Dumbledore. "It occurs to me, Albus, that there is a critical member of your staff you haven't yet introduced me to." Hermione noticed, again, that the Queen's RP was somewhat off, sounding rather more like modern news programmes on BBC than proper Conservative RP.

Dumbledore looked faintly confused by that suggestion, glanced over his shoulder for a second, as though counting the professors quick. "I'm afraid I'm uncertain who you're referring to, ma'am." It probably wasn't entirely fair, but Hermione was a little surprised Dumbledore was calling the Queen _ma'am_, like he was supposed to — he _never_ used proper address for people, she'd half-expected him to use her first name to her face (despite how blatantly disrespectful that would be, but Dumbledore had never struck her as being particularly concerned with being blatantly disrespectful).

"I admit I am uncertain how such things are done over here but, where I am from, it is considered polite to introduce oneself to the domestic staff."

Wait, she couldn't possibly mean...

Dumbledore looked just as dumbfounded as Hermione was, for a few seconds he could only stare down at her. (Literally, she meant, he _was_ rather taller than the Queen.) "Ah... Are you referring to the house-elves?"

For her part, the Queen looked _entirely_ unimpressed with Dumbledore's surprise. "Yes, Headmaster, I am referring to the elves."

There was some more unpleasant muttering at that, but Hermione hardly even noticed — she was a little too busy being blindsided by the fact that, not only did the Queen know what house-elves were, but she _apparently_ actually gave a damn, if her clear (if politely subtle) disdain were any indication...

It took a moment for Dumbledore to recover, clearing his throat before speaking. "Yes, ma'am, I could call Rose up, if you would like. She is the... I suppose a comparable concept would be _seneschal_ — she manages the elves here, and is ultimately responsible for the day-to-day operation of the castle, though I would argue the elves consider her more like, say, the chief of a clan. If that makes sense."

Dumbledore was entirely correct about that, from what Hermione understood. She wasn't exactly an expert on the way elves did things, but from a few hints Lyra had dropped and the way the elves spoke to each other, the impression Hermione had gotten was less overseer–subordinate, and more like Rose was a respected matriarch of a _very_ large family. Sort of analogous to how magical families were run, come to think of it, which was itself a modern extension of how the old Celtic clans worked, so Dumbledore's simile was far more appropriate than it'd seemed at first.

The Queen smiled, though it seemed a rather unpleasant one, thin and slightly mocking. "That will suffice for now, Albus."

If he noticed how displeased the Queen seemed with him, Dumbledore didn't show it, gracefully nodding. He disentangled his arm from hers, took a step away. "Rose, if you would come up for a moment." After a brief but noticeable pause, there was a sharp pop, and there was a house elf standing in the Entrance Hall, before the eyes of the entire student body and all their guests.

Of all the Hogwarts house elves, Hermione was perhaps the most familiar with Rose. For the most part, the elves didn't make a point of actually conversing with students at all, going about their business with utmost efficiency, so Rose might well be the only elf Hermione had ever talked to for any real length. And that almost entirely due to their exploits last year — to accommodate their extensive time-turning, Lyra had negotiated with Rose to get extra meals in the kitchens, and then again to help with her prank with the babbling potion. Hermione herself had spoken with her a few other times, asking after how the castle was run, how the elves got along here.

While Lyra had had plenty to say about the topic, it had been Rose who had disabused her of her old notions about elves entirely. Hermione still wasn't at all comfortable with how things were done elsewhere in the country, and the abuse some elves were subjected to was a _serious_ problem, but the situation at Hogwarts, at least, seemed perfectly fine. To hear Rose tell it, Hogwarts was _their_ home, and the students and even most of the professors were merely temporary guests here. Guests they gave hospitality to, according to terms set by the original agreement made between their ancestors and the Founders, but the elves were ultimately the masters of Hogwarts, even if the humans didn't realise it.

(Lyra had seemed faintly amused when Rose had said that, had later told Hermione most elves had a similar attitude — if in a rather more personal form in the case of elves attached to particular families, they tended to consider themselves _part_ of the family, not subordinate to it. That was, in fact, a large part of why so many of them found the suggestion that they were helpless slaves who needed someone to come in and save them so offensive. Hermione still didn't quite know how to feel about that.)

Much like Cherri, the only other chief elf Hermione had ever met, Rose always seemed to have a quiet sort of dignity about her. Despite how honestly ridiculous she looked to human eyes, but that couldn't be helped, elves and humans simply weren't proportioned the same. The overlarge eyes and overlong ears and fingers and odd grey-green skin tone would always seem alien to Hermione — and she did mean that literally, she wouldn't be surprised to see elves used as a friendly alien race in a science fiction film or something. (Which was even sort of accurate, elves weren't strictly native to this world, like all fae.) Rose in particular had bright blue eyes, with a perceptive sort of sharpness about them, her thin hair twisted into complex plaits, here and there accented with modestly colourful glass beads, which she'd probably made herself. (According to Lyra, elves tended to be very talented metal- and glass-workers, they were just rarely asked to do it.) Despite hardly reaching Hermione's waist, she stood tall and straight, a solemn gravity about her most human politicians failed to match. One would think that would clash with her _very_ simple clothing — basically a formless shift, stamped in Hogwarts colours — but Rose somehow managed to pull off looking modest, slightly ridiculous, and dignified all at once, which was some kind of bloody miracle, Hermione thought.

Dumbledore introduced them, the proper titles shaved down somewhat for brevity. For a second, Rose seemed surprised she was being introduced to _the bloody Queen_, going more still than usual and overlarge eyes even _larger_, but she recovered quickly. (Quicker than Hermione probably would, honestly.) Just as he finished, before Rose could say or do anything, the Queen edged a step closer and—

Hermione didn't quite manage to hold in her gasp, and she wasn't the only one, a noisy wave of shock crossing the room. Because the _bloody Queen_ was _greeting an elf_, and _crouching down to her level to do it_. Or, not _quite_ her level — she did sink dramatically, her cloak flaring a bit with the movement, but even lowered about as far as she could go without actually sitting down, her eyes were still a bit above Rose's — but _still_. Hermione hadn't seen anyone talk to an elf like this, it hadn't even occurred to her to do, she...

Over the noise in the Hall, the amplification charm still carried the Queen's voice to Hermione's ears. "Thank you in advance, Rose, for looking after me and my people during our stay here. I understand you even had to restore portions of the castle ahead of our arrival — I'm given to believe that area of the east wing had been out of use for some time."

Rose looked rather flustered, shifting a bit in place, long ears going noticeably pink. Sinking into a surprisingly graceful curtsy — Hermione _definitely_ couldn't pull that off — Rose squeaked, in her meticulously correct English, "It is no problem, Your Majesty. We elves are happy to do it."

"I'm sure." An odd note slipping into her voice Hermione couldn't quite read, the Queen said, "But it is still appropriate for the one on my end to show appreciation when it is called for, don't you think?"

(Hermione thought she might love the Queen, just a little bit.)

The elf practically beamed, eyes bright. "Yes, ma'am, thank you. We elves do appreciate it. Besides..." Rose leaned forward slightly, her voice lowering a bit, an odd note slipping into hers too, as though sharing in some private joke. "...between you and me, that work on the castle needed to be done anyway. Your visit was as good an excuse to get it done as any."

The Queen let out a short chuckle. "Of course. I hope our early arrival doesn't pose too much of an inconvenience."

"Oh, no, ma'am! We've had your rooms ready for over a week now."

"Good," the Queen said, with another little smile. She covered her mouth with a hand again, cutting off the amplification charm, and muttered something inaudible to Rose — whatever it was, Rose's lips twitched, as though trying not to smirk — before straightening to her full height again.

Hermione nearly jumped when Lyra suddenly spoke. "Now, I think."

"Er, now what?"

Lyra didn't answer. She just started walking, with no explanation, dragging Hermione by the elbow along with her.

"Lyra!" Hermione hissed, low enough she hoped it wouldn't carry too far. "What are you doing?"

"Introducing myself, obviously." _Obviously_.

They'd been at the edge of the crowd, so they were out into the open space in the middle of the Hall after only a couple steps, she saw in her peripheral vision guards were already moving. "Lyra, you can't just—"

"Sure I can. It's only polite." The nearest guards were within a few steps of them now, but Lyra didn't seem concerned. She made some sort of hand gesture, quick enough Hermione didn't quite catch it, and the guards froze in place, visibly surprised. And Lyra continued on toward the Queen, perfectly casual, as though she weren't doing anything out of the ordinary.

"_Lyra!_" But she wasn't listening, she wasn't going to stop, it was impossible to get Lyra to listen to reason half the time, and what was she even _doing_, she couldn't just _walk up and introduce herself to the bloody Queen_, she was insane, and Hermione was _not_ dressed for this—

"Hello, Your Majesty," Lyra chirped. Cheerfully and easily, as though what she was doing right now were perfectly ordinary and reasonable, and not at all insane.

The Queen (only a couple feet away, oh god, this was actually happening) turned to Lyra, a single eyebrow tracking up her forehead. "Hello, there." Her eyes flicked to Sir William, standing a step over her shoulder, as though silently asking what the hell these two random girls were doing here.

Sir William, looking slightly exasperated, gave her a helpless sort of shrug.

"Miss Black, now is _really_ not the—"

Lyra ignored Dumbledore, speaking over him — by the tingle on the air, there was some kind of magic involved, but Hermione wasn't quite sure what it was. "I'm Lyra Bellatrix Aradia Ankaa of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black," complete with an oddly florid bow, letting go of Hermione's arm for a second to do it properly. "I simply thought it appropriate to introduce myself, Your Majesty."

Hermione still felt the impulse to correct Lyra — one was only supposed to call the Queen _Your Majesty_ the _first_ time one addressed her in conversation, it was _ma'am_ afterward, with a few exceptions — but she was too overwhelmed right now to follow through on it. Especially since lecturing at Lyra with the Queen _right there_ was a bit...

"Oh." The Queen's eyes had widened slightly, for a second she stared at Lyra, apparently taking her in. Lyra wasn't exactly dressed to be _meeting the Queen_ either, in jeans she'd stolen from Hermione (transfigured to fit) and a tee shirt for a band Hermione didn't recognise (probably also stolen, from Sirius or Tonks), but Lyra had absolutely no shame whatsoever, of course she didn't give a shite. "Then I have you to thank for the invitation. I had wondered why it hadn't come through official channels, but if you were simply correcting the Wizengamot's oversight..."

"It would have been the Ministry who should have informed you, actually, Director Crouch or one of his people. But I had it on good authority they weren't going to fulfill their obligations where you're concerned, Your Majesty, so I took it upon myself to do so."

The Queen quirked an eyebrow. "Took it upon yourself? My ministers were operating on the assumption you were acting on behalf of the Chief Warlock."

"No, Your Majesty, it was my idea. In fact, I get the feeling the Chief Warlock and Director Crouch are quite annoyed with me. My peers tend to prefer to keep the United Kingdom out of our business as much as possible, you see, even when they shouldn't. Secrecy has endured long enough too many forget just how closely tied we are."

"I have gotten that impression, yes." The Queen glanced briefly at Dumbledore — Hermione couldn't see her face at this angle, but judging by the Headmaster's expression (he almost looked _sheepish_) she must not be particularly happy with him. Not that Hermione hadn't put that together already, she thought the Queen was singularly unimpressed with the famous Albus Dumbledore. Turning back to Lyra with a slightly crooked smile, she said, "All the same, I do thank you for the invitation, my lady, no matter how...unsanctioned it might have been."

"Happy to do it, Your Majesty," Lyra chirped. She _did_ sound happy, almost infectiously so, but Hermione would bet the fact that she'd inconvenienced Dumbledore and Crouch was the larger part of why. And then, as though suddenly remembering she was there, "Oh! And this is Hermione Granger, my muggleborn girlfriend."

Hermione did feel the impulse to smack Lyra for referring to her as her _muggleborn girlfriend_ — she'd asked her not to do that _multiple times_, but of course she didn't listen, and to the _bloody Queen_ no less — but she was too overwhelmed at the moment to follow through on it.

The Queen's eyes widened slightly in what was probably surprise — at the _muggleborn_ part or the _girlfriend_ part Hermione couldn't guess, could go either way. Or perhaps simply that Lyra went around introducing her like that, it was a very strange thing to do. She recovered quickly, turning to Hermione. (The _bloody Queen_ was _right there_, looking _directly at her_, this was actually happening.) "Hermione Granger... I do believe I read your letter in the _Quibbler_."

Something came out of Hermione's mouth, but it probably wasn't identifiable English. Forget for the moment the idea that _the Queen read the Quibbler_, she— Hermione had known, when she'd written the thing, that people _would_ be reading it, but the thought that actually _important_ people would somehow hadn't occurred to her.

This was, just, completely surreal. That was the Queen, right there, and here Hermione was, in her lazy weekend clothes and her hair a complete fucking mess, and Lyra had gotten hold of her arm again so it was probably completely obvious exactly what she'd meant by _girlfriend_, and the Queen had _read her letter_, and she had absolutely no idea what to do with herself right now.

"You... Oh, I'm sorry, I'm—" Hermione froze, horror abruptly washing over her. "Oh god."

"Er, Maïa?"

Hermione hissed (too loud, _much_ too loud), "_I don't know how to curtsy!_"

Lyra burst into high, bubbly laughter. Because of course she did.

The Queen looked a bit amused too, the corner of her lips curling, blue eyes dancing. "Dear girl, you're wearing trousers."

She felt her face go _very_ warm.

The faint smile turning into an obvious smirk (this was _so_ embarrassing, could this have gone any more badly?), the Queen said, "Well, it's a delight to meet you two, of course, but we should be getting upstairs. I'd like to get settled in before dinner, and I understand Sir William intends to take his people and scour half the castle."

"He wouldn't be good at his job if he didn't," Lyra said, her voice slightly mangled by the giggles she hadn't yet managed to suppress.

"Quite so. Rose, if you would." Rose, who had been glaring up at Lyra in disapproval, jumped to attention, and started skipping up the Grand Staircase, presumably leading the way toward the rooms set aside for their British guests. The Queen shot the two of them one last, calculating look before turning to follow, flanked by Sir William and Dumbledore and trailed by a pack of ministers and bodyguards.

As the students around them started to loosen up, the large room filling with the noise of people moving around and chattering, Hermione turned to Lyra. She was still chuckling under her breath a little, lips stretched and eyes dancing with her usual reckless grin. "Well, Vicky certainly hasn't—"

Before even Hermione had realised what was happening, she'd raised her free hand and smacked Lyra over the chest. (Not hard, really, just—) "God _damn_ it, Lyra, don't _do_ that!"

Lyra blinked. "Don't do what?"

The giddy anxiety that'd been filling her chest twisting into hot frustration, Hermione hit Lyra again, started pulling her arm out from hers. "Just, dragging me up to talk to _the Queen_, what the hell were you—"

And Lyra was grinning at her, so Hermione, instinctively, lifted her hand to smack her over the shoulder, but Lyra caught her by the wrist before the hit landed, moving lightning fast. "Damn, Maïa, you get _violent_ when you're angry." (A part of Hermione, partially but not entirely buried by how frustrated she was with Lyra right now, was a little relieved she was still using _Maïa_, couldn't actually care about the hitting.) Her smile turning crooked, she drawled, "I like it."

The suggestive tone on Lyra's voice might have made her flush, if completely humiliating herself in front of the _bloody Queen_ hadn't already had her face practically _on fire_. "Shut _up_, Lyra. Don't pull shite like—" She tried to shove Lyra away with her free hand, but Lyra caught that wrist too; trying to yank them back only had Lyra pulled off-balance, stumbling into her. "—I can't believe you just—"

That tension crawling up her throat making an odd, almost audible shiver, before she even fully realised what was happening, she was somehow kissing Lyra.

Lyra jerked with surprise, but not far, not with Hermione's hands suddenly buried in her hair, and was frozen for a single shocked second, before her arms tightened around Hermione's waist and started kissing her back. Rather..._enthusiastically_, which, Hermione was still self-aware enough to be a little embarrassed about that, because they _were_ still in the middle of the Great Hall — in fact, everyone knew they were a thing, yes, but Hermione didn't think they'd ever actually kissed in public before — but she was, just, too carried away with a confusing mix of conflicting feelings to really care about it that much.

Because see, those hot, crawling tingles weren't _just_ anger. Yes, Lyra _had_ just humiliated her, in front of the whole school, and the _bloody Queen_...however unintentionally — she knew Lyra herself was simply incapable of feeling humiliation, and didn't quite understand the concept. That whole farce had been supremely embarrassing and supremely _irritating_, yes, but Hermione would get over it. She was practically already half-way over it. She hadn't been at all prepared to _meet the Queen_, but that wasn't even entirely Lyra's fault, was it? _Lyra_ wasn't responsible for the Queen's party showing up three hours early — if they'd arrived according to schedule Hermione would have had opportunity to at least change first. And, the Queen _had_ to be accustomed to people occasionally acting like tongue-tied idiots around her, and she had no real reason to give a damn about Hermione, she'd probably forget all about it in a couple days. And the rest of the school's opinion of her was already well-formed. (Though this, right now, snogging Lyra in full view of bloody _everyone_, might have some effect on that, she should probably stop...) So it didn't _really_ matter, that much. It'd been unpleasant, but it hadn't been _that_ bad, it was over, it was fine.

She _was_ still angry with her, yes, but it wasn't _all_ anger. Sometimes, far more than she was comfortable admitting to anyone, Hermione really did wish she could, just, _do_ things, and _not care_, the way Lyra did. It was the very first thing that had initially fascinated her about Lyra, over a year ago now.

Lyra had, just...walked up to her, the _bloody Queen_, and just introduced herself, as casual as anything. (She was also responsible for the Queen being here in the first place, that too, couldn't forget that.) And she'd, just, talked to her, joking and smirking, like it were no big deal. Not just talking to her, but openly shit-talking Dumbledore and Crouch — one of whom had _definitely_ been in ear-shot — and she just... Hermione...

It wasn't without some ambivalence, because it _did_ tend to make trouble for everyone nearby. But Hermione was honest enough with herself to admit Lyra's wild, infectious devil-may-care attitude was one of the things she most admired about her. It was... She...

Ah, fuck, she could think this sort of thing about her own girlfriend, it was fine! It was _sexy as hell_, that's what it was!

It was a bit messed up, and that Hermione could be in such a confusing mix of embarrassment and frustration and arousal and envy all at once, and flip from yelling at Lyra to kissing her so quickly, _probably_ didn't say anything good about her own psychology. But she just couldn't help it, that whole thing had been overwhelming, and Lyra was just...

_Lyra_. Lyra was just Lyra, that was all.

(Hermione was in _so_ much trouble.)

Eventually, Hermione snapped out of it, pulling away a bit — not so much that Lyra's hands weren't still lingering on her hips, or that she couldn't still smell her, but enough to breathe, anyway. She resisted the urge to self-consciously glance around to see if anyone was paying them undue attention, it was fine, don't think about it, it was fine. (She probably shouldn't have done that, but, Lyra, being so _Lyra_, ugh.)

Lyra was grinning at her, of course, though not quite so bright as usual, a faint sense of uncertainty about her. "Giving me those mixed signals again, Maïa. First you're hitting me, then you're kissing me — really not making figuring out this dating thing easy on me, you know."

"Yeah, I know. If it's any consolation, I have no bloody idea what I'm doing either."

"Funny enough, it is, actually." Lyra's head tilted to the side a little, some of her hair tipping over her face. (Hermione had managed to muss it up a little, oops.) "Does this mean I can snog you outside the dorm now? I've been avoiding it, figured you'd be weird about it."

Pulling the rest of the way away from Lyra, Hermione groaned, lifted both hands to rub at her face. At least Lyra had been considerate enough to even think of it, but... "This is just going to encourage you, isn't it?"

Lyra grinned. "Yep!"

A traitorous smile twitched at Hermione's lips. "Yes, well..." She cleared her throat, forcefully ignored how distractingly warm she was feeling right now (they were _in public_, god damn). "I, er, I need to go write my mum."

"What about?"

"Meeting the Queen, obviously." And also possibly about that...odd moment just then, if she could work up the nerve to actually tell Mum about it. (She didn't expect she would.) "Meet up in the library later?"

Lyra hummed, her lips quirking a little in thought. "Nah, I'll come with you. There are notes in our room I want anyway." One eyebrow ticking up, still smiling like a crazy person, Lyra offered a hand.

Grinning back, Hermione took it, and immediately set off for Gryffindor Tower.

* * *

_That went on **way** longer than it probably needed to. Whoops?_

_Poor Hermione. Feelings are so **hard**..._

[must be counting the whole Commonwealth] — _Specifically, Mira is counting all the countries in the Commonwealth of Nations that actually still recognise the Queen (the so-called "Commonwealth realms"). Republics aren't counted in the total, but countries like Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and Papua New Guinea are. (Which is why the total isn't closer to two billion, India doesn't recognise the Queen anymore.) And I had to come up with that number myself, adding up population figures from around 1990-1995 for all sixteen Commonwealth realms, bluh._

_In case anyone intends to say anything, yes, the Queen is a different person on purpose, obviously. I prefer not to use real people in fiction if at all reasonable, come up with my own characters to swap into their place instead. The Victoria II here was originally invented as an important side character for another fic I never got to, one where Lily survives Hallowe'en and eventually leads a revolution against the magical government. Her role here is much, much smaller than it would have been in that one, she's mostly just present, being a sarcastic royal bitch._

_Right, more Hallowe'en weekend scenes to come as we finish them._

_—Lysandra_


	20. Slivers

Ashe jerked awake, the haze of dreams lingering for a moment, leaving her disoriented and confused.

Even after her mind fully woke up, her eyes stubbornly remained bleary and unfocused, but she didn't really need them to know where she was — the kink in her shoulder, the dull ache in the side of her neck, she must have passed out at her desk again. She had rather too many projects going on at once these days — her own work, assisting Severus and Argus with the castle, on top of the usual classwork and student projects — and she'd been having rather more trouble sleeping than usual. She'd been taking one last pass at the enchantments intended to isolate the portions of the castle set aside for their guests, forcing certain bands of the wards back so they could manage their own security. They'd finished the script some time ago, but Langley had come to her with privacy concerns, she'd taken it upon herself to amend their work, isolate those sections of the castle from the divination and detection spells on the wards.

The Hogwarts wards being as deep and complex as they were, that was a _much_ more difficult proposition than it might seem at first glance — Ashe must have lost track of time working at it and drifted off.

Though she had, she noticed, looking over her work, managed to mostly finish it. Just cancel out this floating terminator here, and... Well, normally she'd worry throwing something as obstructive as this into the middle of a ward scheme would cause potentially catastrophic interference, but the Hogwarts wards were tapped directly into the magic of the land here, the wards were essentially grounded. It _was_ possible to flood the system more quickly than it could compensate for — after years working with the wards, she was certain that would be the only practical way to crack them from the outside, though it would take an _absurd_ volume of magic — but her slapdash mental model of what exactly that interference would look like was _well_ within acceptable limits. Especially since the interference from _this_ hack should resonate destructively with interference from _other_ hacks they already had in place throughout the property, it should be fine.

Distracted with running the figures in her head, it took a little while for Ashe to remember she'd been startled awake by something. Her office was dark — Tansy must have come by at some point, presumably throwing the quilt she'd woken up under over Ashe while she'd been taking care of the lights — so she couldn't be entirely sure, but it didn't _look_ like anything was moving around. An easy reach for the enchantments laid into the room, a twitch of a finger (she winced at the warm light suddenly assaulting her eyes), and nope, empty. Then what had...

There was an odd, liquid shiver across the wards. Ashe straightened in her chair, frowning to herself. The magic of Hogwarts did some odd shite sometimes — the castle's peculiar willfulness was, she thought, a consequence of how its heart had been crafted, the kind of ritual magic that had been commonplace at the time, but now illegal for centuries and half-forgotten — but _this_ feeling wasn't something she'd encountered yet. It was something...warm, and smooth, and almost _gleeful_, like...

There was another shiver, an echo originating somewhere on the property, radiating out from a single point.

..._happiness_. Someone was making contact with the wards, and the castle was _happy_.

What the hell...

Clumsily, wincing at the aches she'd developed sleeping somewhere she really shouldn't, Ashe pulled herself to her feet. And almost immediately started shivering — she wrapped the quilt more tightly around herself, cursing under her breath. Managing the wards wasn't technically part of her job, but she did have a better intuitive feel for these things than anyone on staff, and this odd whatever it was was subtle enough it was possible she was the only one who'd been woken up by it. Might as well check it out herself.

After all, with all the guests coming in and out of the castle, if someone was fucking with the wards she really should at least see who it was. Just because the castle seemed to like them didn't mean their intentions were necessarily good. Like any other being with a soul, Hogwarts had its own biases, and was capable of being fooled.

Ashe wandered the night-darkened halls, tracking the disturbance to its source. The shivers weren't constant, but they were frequent enough Ashe could follow them, despite how diffuse the sense of direction she got was. It took quite a while, perhaps even upwards of an hour, but in time she found their intruder.

_Intruder_, because the woman she found — slowly wandering through the Charms department, fingers softly trailing along the stone of the wall — was entirely unfamiliar. A shade shorter than Ashe, she was wearing a plain cotton skirt, trailing down to about a handspan above her ankles, a slipover in a colourful mix of green and blue and white (it looked vaguely tartan-ish, though not quite right), loosely draped over her shoulders a thin shawl printed with a complex geometric pattern in black and green and blue, something about it looking _very_ Eastern to Ashe's eye. The sandals she was wearing, despite the cold, also looked vaguely Eastern, decorated with ceramic beads and tiny bits of brass. Though the woman herself obviously wasn't Asian — Ashe had come up behind her, couldn't see her face, but her messy, short-cropped hair was a sunny blonde, her colouring in general clearly European.

Ashe had come up behind her, quietly, but she was certain the woman already knew she was here. The gentle, tingling sense of magic on the air was unmistakable — the woman was a legilimens, and a very powerful one. Ashe isolated her own mind instinctively at the faintest contact, but even though the woman surely didn't get anything from her, she must have felt her presence at least.

Sure enough, the woman said, "Good night, Professor Babbling. Sorry for waking you." She had a peculiar accent, Ashe couldn't quite place it.

"Who said you woke me? Maybe I'm just out for a walk."

The woman shot a smirk at Ashe over her shoulder, eyes dancing in the darkness. "Hogwarts told me."

The implication there was obvious — this stranger got enough information from the wards to know whatever she was doing with them had prodded Ashe awake. (Also, she realised, who she was, they'd never met before but the woman had identified her without even looking.) So, she'd probably known Ashe was coming long before she'd gotten here. That was...more than a little unnerving. Ashe didn't think even Albus was that closely tied to the wards. "I guess she likes you."

"Hmm." Ashe had come up beside the woman, at an angle she could actually see her face now. Round-cheeked and high-browed, she looked rather younger than Ashe, she thought, maybe in her mid-twenties, which she was immediately calling bullshit on. The weight of her mind on the air, the way the magic of the castle bent in toward her, no, she was older than that — _much_ older than that, unless Ashe was very much mistaken. It could be hard to tell, there was no real way to detect it, but...

Was this woman a metamorph? Not Langley, surely, and while she did have talent in the mind arts, Kyrah simply wasn't this..._big_. Someone new, then.

Or, more to the point, someone _old_. With how much the castle seemed to like her...

"Ah, here we are." The woman, who'd been slowly pacing down the hall, came to a stop. With a graceful finger, she sketched a single unfamiliar rune in the air, glowing a brilliant silver, and flicked her wrist — the rune shattered into a hundred narrow bands, slicing into the wall to her right, and the stone, floor to ceiling a dozen metres long and a good half a metre thick, _vanished_, a pair of darkened classrooms on the other side suddenly visible—

But only for a moment. There was a solid _clang_ in the mental presence around her, and a sudden flood of magic, so intense it almost burned to stand so close, the empty space where a wall had been twisted, thin light lensing around distortions in space, Ashe instinctively looked away from something that _should not be_—

As abruptly as it had started, the overwhelming storm of magic ended. In the immediate aftermath, another odd shiver rippled out through the wards, the synthetic spirit of the ancient castle squirming with alien satisfaction.

When Ashe turned back around, she saw the wall had reappeared, exactly as it had been before.

"... What was that?"

The woman smiled, pale hazel eyes dancing in the diffuse torchlight. "Removing a sliver."

Ashe blinked. "That explained absolutely nothing at all."

"I suppose it wouldn't." The woman turned to lean back against the wall and folded her arms over her stomach, wrapping herself up in her colourful shawl. "I've read your work, Professor. It's quite good. Your signature project, I assume you were inspired by modern computer programming."

Ashe felt one of her eyebrows tracking upward — it had been, obviously, but very few of her peers had ever picked up on that, not many kept up with muggle technology. "Familiar with computers, are you."

"Of course. I'm a bit of a tinkerer. I've always found technology fascinating, be it magical or not."

"Magical technology?"

"How else would you consider artifice?"

That...was a good point. Muggle engineering and design really weren't that conceptually different from magical enchantment and artifice, when it came down to it — they were simply working with different resources. Which _was_ obvious, she just didn't think she'd ever heard anyone put it that way. "Alright. Your point?"

"Oh, I'll get there eventually. How much do you know about the early history of Hogwarts?"

Ashe would protest that was another subject change, but she assumed the woman meant to make a point concerning the foundation of the wards themselves, to eventually come around to an explanation of what exactly she was doing here. So, going about it the long way, fine. "No more or less than any schoolchild learns, I think. Though, I've always had the feeling our historians get a lot wrong — there's too much of modern ideas and politics in the story everyone knows."

The woman smiled, an oddly ambivalent smile, at once gentle and sharp, cheerful and bitter. "Much of our history was rewritten in the generations immediately after the Statute. This is something all societies do, now and again, when the world has changed enough the old too often finds itself, intentionally or not, reinterpreted through the lens of the new. No culture on earth that I am familiar with remembers their own past _nearly_ as well as they think they do. Britain is no exception.

"Though, so far as I am aware, the past has not been so thoroughly forgotten that modern people don't remember the original purpose of this castle."

Ashe felt a smile pull at her lips. "It is _a castle_. The Founders built it as a fortress, during their war against the Danes, I think."

"Saying they were fighting _the Danes_ is a bit too broad — Helga and her family were from the dales of _Svíþjóð_ — but that's not particularly important, I suppose. You are correct, this castle was originally used as a fortress in a time of war, long before it was adapted into a place of learning." Her smile turning a little crooked, the woman said, "Does anything about that idea seem odd, to you?"

Ashe shrugged. "Not really. It's easier to reuse something than to replace it."

"Professor, does Hogwarts seem particularly defensible to you?"

"Oh." Frowning to herself, she took a moment to consider the arrangement of the various courtyards and wings of the castle, how it sat on the cliffs and along the lake. "No, now that I think about it. I never noticed that. The castle was different back then, wasn't it?"

"Very different," the woman said, nodding. "If one of the so-called Founders were to walk these halls now, they wouldn't recognise it. But then, that they wouldn't recognise it wouldn't be an unusual thought to them."

"Er..."

The woman giggled, the sound high and smooth. "Think about it, Professor. Say what one will about the _víkingar_, they were _very_ adaptable warriors. You might not know what sort of enemy you'll be fighting until they arrive at your doorstep — their numbers, their composition, their equipment, their tactics. Hell, there were _jarlar_ who liked to fly into battle _on dragon-back_, they weren't exactly a regular, predictable foe. You're an expert with complex, variable magics. If you were designing fortifications to defend against an attacking force, but you didn't know exactly what that force would look like, how would you handle that?"

"Well." Ashe let out a long sigh through her nose — that was a _very_ interesting theoretical problem, wasn't it. Well, theoretical for _her_, obviously the Founders would have had to find an actual, practical solution, in a time when warding had been much more primitive. (She found her respect for them ticking up a notch.) "I suppose, I would come up with a variety of scenarios, and design defences suitable for each. I would divide the material of the castle into blocks that could be shifted and shaped as needed, or hidden away in folded space when they weren't. I would write a script for the wards that could rearrange these elements as needed to build the defences to match these pre-programmed scenarios. The actual process might be a bit of a mess, I guess..."

Her lips tilting into a smirk again, the woman said, "And if you're in the middle of a conventional battle, and magical reinforcements pop in, backed up with three _jarlar_ on dragon-back?"

"I suppose we all die, then. You couldn't change the form of the castle to respond, the pieces moving around might pulp everyone inside. Is that a real scenario?"

The woman nodded. "Yes, that actually happened. We almost lost that battle."

Ashe felt herself stiffen, icy tingles sliding down her spine. It took her a second to find her voice. "..._We_?"

"I was here. I was here from the beginning, in fact — that's why the wards like me so much, I participated in the ritual that sculpted their heart."

"Who _are_ you?"

This time, the woman actually hesitated for a moment, a slight tension running through the power hanging all around them, her smile hitching just a little. "I was close to the woman you call Rowena Ravenclaw, make of that what you will — though I would prefer that not get out. I'm here checking the wards ahead of the arrival of the delegation from the International Confederation; I have a job to do here, and I don't want to make a scene. Just call me Sally."

At any other moment, Ashe might have laughed at such an intimidatingly powerful woman using a name as silly as _Sally_, but she was rather too distracted with the, just, _insane_ thought that... "Was Ravenclaw _your mother_?"

'Sally' raised an eyebrow, giving Ashe a flat look, and didn't answer the question. "Your solution is a good one, theoretically, working from your particular skillset, but it isn't a _practical_ one. What was needed was something much more...readily adaptable. Something that could be changed, at a moment's notice, in reaction to evolving circumstances, without jeopardising the people inside or opening up even temporary holes to be exploited."

"But that's not possible." Ashe cleared her throat, forcefully dragging her attention away from the question of just who 'Sally' was. It was clear she wasn't going to answer, and it..._probably_ wasn't important. The castle, at least, felt pleased she was here, and if she knew enough about how the place worked to do whatever it was she was doing (which still hadn't been explained yet), she might actually be telling the truth about being closely tied to the Founders. Honestly, Ashe was more interested in the explanation of what she was doing than who she was. "Even what I suggested would have had serious practical concerns in actually implementing, but the fluid sort of reactivity you're talking about..."

Sally smiled, crooked and smug. "Oh, it's _very_ possible. I'm certain you've heard of graphic transfiguration tricks — the important ones here are anchoring and mediated conjuration."

"Yes, of course." One of the fundamental principles of transfiguration was that it was temporary: the energy forcing the object into an unnatural shape decayed over time, and the object would revert once its formal inertia overcame the power of the spell. However, it was possible to use enchanting as a loophole, to design a script that drew in ambient magic to sustain the transfiguration — this must be what Sally meant by 'anchoring'. (It was standard practice among most manufacturing outfits these days, a quick and dirty labour-saving measure.) Mediated conjuration was a somewhat more exotic topic. In layman's terms, it was possible to design an artifact that would act as a sort of conjuration focus, the user dictating the exact result, but most of the work done by the enchantment, automatically.

This was _very_ finicky, though. The only practical example Ashe was familiar with off the top of her head was a technique used by certain Egyptian libraries. Ancient documents were kept in climate-controlled vaults, where they could be most effectively preserved, the contents accessed indirectly through artifacts that conjured copies — the user simply selected the document they wanted from the archive, and the device provided an exact replica with no further outside input. But this trick required having the original on hand to copy from, it was more a mediated _doubling_ charm than proper free conjuration, which was _much_ more difficult. The problem was intent: the result of a conjuration was a product of the caster's intent, which required a complexity of mind and magic enchantments simply couldn't imitate. It should theoretically be possible to design a new theory of transfiguration that didn't require the same sort of inputs, but without _significant_ advancements in humanity's understanding of magic, it was simply impossible to conduct that kind of magic without...

Ashe felt a wave of tingles break across her skin, realisation crashing over her like a cold wave.

_...without a soul_.

As a product of its creation, involving half-forgotten and now _very_ illegal ritual magic, _Hogwarts had a soul_.

"Is the entire castle _conjured?!"_

Sally smiled — the pleased, proud smile of a teacher regarding a good student. "The original castle had been entirely composed of anchored conjuration, yes."

For long, breathless seconds, Ashe could only stare sightlessly, the implications of that idea swirling dizzyingly in her head.

That...

That was...

It was absolutely _insane_, yes, but when she thought about it? It actually explained a lot. Hogwarts didn't really behave as a normal, physical building should. The common assumption was that this was a consequence of magical accretion — if magic is concentrated in a single location for long enough, very _strange_ things start to happen — but Hogwarts wasn't really _that_ old, not compared to the structures usually used as an example of the phenomenon. Not to mention, some of the things Hogwarts did were unusual. Stairs seemingly trying to trip people up on purpose, doors refusing to open unless asked politely, that sort of thing, that was normal in sufficiently ancient magical buildings. But the way the castle seemed to _move_...

In only the decade or so Ashe had been here, her apartments had rotated nearly a third of the way around the residential wing, and just this year her bathroom had randomly flipped to the opposite side of her bedroom. A couple years into her tenure, her office suddenly grew a door connecting to her classroom, despite the two rooms being _on different_ _floors_ — the distance between them had suddenly expanded the next year, when her office migrated right next to Filius's. Now it was actually quicker to get to her classroom from her apartments _or_ the Great Hall to go to her office then through that peculiar extra door, teleporting three floors and halfway across the castle in a single step.

And that wasn't even getting into some of the _weirder_ areas of the castle. The Grand Staircase, for example, the Come-and-Go Room, the catacombs — _not_ dungeons, Ashe had noticed very obvious signs of burials in the lower levels — the Slytherin and Hufflepuff dorms, the elf warrens, all twisted up in each other, a confusing tangle that seemingly shouldn't even be able to exist in normal physical space. And then they _moved_, _constantly_, the passages in Slytherin and the catacombs in particular seeming to change not just year to year, but sometimes _day to day_.

That wasn't an ordinary thing to find in old magical buildings. There were other examples of similar phenomena all around the world, yes, but they were _very_ rare, and never so extreme as Hogwarts.

But if the entire structure were _conjured_...

As insane as that sounded? It explained _everything_.

"Fucking hell..."

Sally giggled again. "Yes, it is quite impressive, isn't it? The form of the castle can be altered through the wards, at will. There are multiple grades of influence a person can have — looking at how they're set up right now, the students have virtually none, most professors have some minor control over their own spaces, the four heads of house have significantly more, though restricted somewhat to particular areas of the castle, and the headmaster has similar power over the entire structure. Though, the greatest permissions — the sort of access you would need to entirely reshape the castle, from the ground up — haven't had anyone new keyed into them for a while. It feels like some centuries, though I can't say for certain.

"From what I can tell, at some point over the generations since the school opened, knowledge of exactly what this castle is was forgotten. Which, I imagine Wynn and Sylvi would be quite disappointed to know that — they did consider these wards their crowning achievement, and nobody even remembers what they are!"

It took Ashe a second to find her voice. "Ah, Wynn and Sylvi?"

"Hrodhwyn Uí Bháinfhéigh and Silvahárr of Syltheris — how corrupted the names have gotten over the years, _honestly_," Sally said, _rolling her eyes_, "I don't know where the hell 'Ravenclaw' came from, and _Salazar_? You _do_ know he wasn't Spanish, right? Spain was barely even a thing, the peninsula was still mostly controlled by the caliphs, and—"

"Wait." Ashe struggled to control her voice, an edge of laughter still far too obvious. "You called Slytherin _Sylvi_?"

Sally shrugged. "That's what everyone called him. Family and friends, anyway."

That... That was just _silly_. With the absurdly terrible reputation Slytherin had in Britain these days, she just— Ashe tried to hold it in, but it was no good, she burst into laughter.

The ancient woman glared at her — not _too_ angry, Ashe thought, just sort of vaguely irritated. "The stories about Sylvi people tell these days are complete nonsense, you know. About all four of them, really, but how Sylvi and Helga have been reinvented is particularly bad."

"I assumed the stuff about Slytherin was mostly shite." There were scattered historical documents that suggested Gryffindor had been the first of the Founders to die — by all accounts, he had lived hard and fast, Ashe wasn't surprised — and the other three had still been at Hogwarts for a couple decades after, so the story about the Gryffindor–Slytherin feud was probably a myth invented later. Honestly, the pureblood supremacists hold Slytherin as some kind of hero in their absurd mythology, but the very idea of 'purebloods' hadn't even _existed_ in the 10th Century! So bloody stupid. "But I hadn't realised they'd gotten Helga way off too."

"Oh, yes, Helga is almost as bad as Sylvi." Her lips tilting into a crooked, nostalgic smirk, Sally said, "Damn scary woman, Helga _Einríðisdóttir_. She was a Swedish _jarl_ before coming to Britain, you know, had already been a famous dragon-slayer at the time. I actually saw her duel a _jarl_ on dragon-back, she killed both sorcerer and dragon — and she didn't have a mount of any kind," she went on, smile stretching wider, eyes dancing, "she just summoned herself up to the thing, and fought them in mid-air like a complete fucking monster. Came back afterward charred and covered in dragonblood, all magic-high and giggly. I've been around for going on eleven centuries now, and that's _still_ the single sexiest thing I've ever seen."

...

Okay, yes, that did sound seriously fucking impressive, Ashe would give her that. It was a little unnerving just how much Sally had apparently...enjoyed watching what had to have been some pretty serious violence, but it had been a different time, then. Warrior culture had still had a dominant place in society, just as much with the Celts as with the Danes — as foreign and disturbing as it might seem to Ashe, it was simply what Sally had been raised with.

"So, okay, the castle is conjured." As interesting as Hufflepuff apparently having been some kind of ridiculously deadly magical viking was, Ashe honestly did find the question of the wards _more_ interesting. Really, a mediated conjuration in the form of an _entire castle_ was, just, completely fantastical. The sort of over-the-top magical achievement that only existed in myth and fiction. "What exactly are you doing, then?"

Sally smiled again, seemingly pleased to be going back to a more academic subject — and, Ashe thought, a shade relieved. "I'm not surprised you haven't noticed. The castle has been like this so long, I suppose it's only expected modern people shouldn't even realise what's wrong. To put it bluntly, the wards have been crippled — the defensive ones, I mean. I haven't been keeping up with events in Britain nearly as much as I should have, but once I did a bit of research it was blatantly obvious. Some modifications were made to the wards once the castle's use as a school really started to pick up, mostly intent-based. It should be, quite simply, _impossible_ for someone bearing harmful intent to any resident of this castle to cross onto the grounds. And these wards operate through divining magics, not the ordinary channels that interact directly with the mind, they are all but impossible to fool. Helga came up with the idea herself — the Danes of the time had very developed divination techniques — and though Wynn and Sylvi spent _years_ working at it, they never could crack it, not for longer than a few minutes at a time.

"Look back at the last couple centuries here, Professor," Sally said, her voice low and solemn, "and tell me if you believe the wards are operating as they should. Far too often, there have been interlopers with harmful intent, or even professors seeking their positions for malicious ends — that also should not be possible, the wards _should_ reject them when the headmaster tries to key them in. And there are certain artifacts that should not have been able to cross the wardline, certain beings that should not be allowed here. There has been an acromantula colony out in the Forest, for decades now, living within the bounds of the wards, that should not be possible. The dementors showed up at a quidditch match, no, they should have been dispersed the second they touched the wardline. The wards are under too much strain, suffering under too much resistance, they simply cannot operate as they should.

"Can you make a guess as to why?"

Well, no, ordinarily she wouldn't be able to — Ashe hadn't even realised there was anything wrong. There _were_ significant portions of the script that were...inert, but she'd always just assumed they had exotic activation conditions that simply hadn't been met. There _was_ a fair bit of noise on the wards but, again, she'd always just assumed that was a natural consequence of having so many interlaced elements at once, and the castle _did_ effectively funnel it into the ambient magic of the valley. It hadn't occurred to her that, while the wards did manage to compensate enough to prevent any explosive overburdening, the interference might still be significant enough to prevent varied elements from functioning properly.

Perhaps because, well, that wasn't a problem she'd ever encountered before. Most ward systems, if they were burdened badly enough to start interfering with basic functions, they would have long ago collapsed under the strain. That the Hogwarts wards were anchored so well to function _at all_ under such perilous conditions was honestly quite impressive. She felt her respect for Ravenclaw and Slytherin tick up yet another notch.

It wasn't a problem she'd considered before but, now that she knew a little bit more about the heart of the wards and had witnessed Sally doing whatever it was she was doing (even if she hadn't understood what it was at the time), the answer was pretty damn obvious. "Construction. The more modern sections of the castle were built, with outside materials — I imagine there's plenty of remodeling done in the older areas as well. You're vanishing the physical materials, and filling in the gaps with conjured replacements."

Her smile stretching wider, Sally nodded. "Very good guess, Professor. That's exactly correct. While the castle can compensate to accommodate foreign materials, they were always intended to be limited — furniture, supplies, clothing, people. Once your predecessors built outside stone and metal into the very structure of the castle, no, the wards could not compensate for _that_. Like thousands of burning slivers driven into its skin," she said, her voice sinking a bit, going cold and bitter. "To those who can hear it, Hogwarts is crying out in agony. I'm simply trying to help her."

Ashe barely managed to hold in a gasp, when the implication finally occurred to her. If the castle was truly aware — which it was, in a sense, if a rather alien one — interference borne on the wards would be the closest thing it was capable of experiencing to _pain_. "I... I hadn't realised, I had no idea..."

"That's quite alright, Profesor, you needn't feel guilty. You couldn't have known."

"Can I help?" The words burst past her lips before she'd even really consider them...but, once they'd registered, she didn't regret that she'd said them. Yes, she might not have known, sure, but the work she'd done on the castle over the last years, here and there, the way she'd just sunk whatever burdensome floating remainders into the wards, she...

She had, Ashe had abruptly noticed, been contributing to the persistent, centuries-long torture of an innocent living (sort of) being. Sally might not condemn her for it, but she couldn't help feeling awful anyway.

"I mean, I realise it's a very complicated, long term project — with how long this has been going on, it could take _years_ to finish — and I'm not nearly as familiar with—" Ashe broke off with a groan. "I just noticed I might not be all that much help, I don't have nearly the same power over the castle you do..."

Sally seemed rather surprised with her outburst, but not in a bad way. If anything, she was pleased, her smile so wide her teeth glinted in the torchlight, hazel eyes dancing. "I am certainly willing to accept the help, Professor. It will indeed be a long, difficult project — unless circumstances change significantly I might not be able to stay long enough to finish it myself. We will have to consider what to do about—" She froze, her face abruptly blanking, stiffening a bit against the wall. "_No._"

Ashe shivered as the magic in the air shook with the word, heavy and cold and foreboding. "I'm sorry, I didn't—"

"No, not you," Sally said, sounding somewhat absent. Glancing slightly away from her, seemingly speaking into the empty air, "Do not pull yourself across the wards all the way. They will certainly react to your presence — we wouldn't want to wake the Chief Warlock, would we?"

Off to Ashe's right, there was a shiver of magic, shadow and light contorting around one another, and expanding out from the centre of the vortex appeared... Well, it _looked_ like a ghost, with smokey edges and somewhat transparent, but it _definitely_ wasn't. For one thing, the figure still had colour to her — somewhat washed-out colour, but definitely colour. _Her_ because it was a woman, a girl really, perhaps in her early twenties at the oldest, wearing a loose, cheery sundress, curly black hair (or possibly a dark red?) bouncing around her shoulders, face pulled into a brilliant grin.

And the woman had absolutely no magical presence whatsoever, like she were no more than an illusion — _less_ than an illusion, really, since even illusions had some effect on the magic around them, and with this apparition there was none. That was...odd. And more than a little unnerving.

Her voice odd and distorted, as though she were speaking from behind a thick barrier, the stranger said, "I suppose not, Dumbledore can be _so_ tedious."

"What are you even doing here?"

"I'm avoiding the Board. They're being tedious at _me_ because you're not there, and Lindsay wanted to have a final word with you before we officially left. And you're going to have all _year_ to play with your pet castle. Starting _tomorrow_."

Sally sighed, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling for a second. "Yes, I suppose so." She pushed herself off from the wall, with every hint of reluctance. "The life of a politician," she said to Ashe, her lips twitching with an ironic smirk. "I'm afraid I must excuse myself, Professor."

"That's quite alright." Ashe tore her eyes from the apparition, with some effort. It was, just, a _weird_ phenomenon — shadow magic, maybe? — and the girl herself was slightly off-putting, the sharp, bloody grin she was giving her. "I should probably get to bed anyway. I was passed out at my desk when your work woke me up."

"I see." The strained, unpleasant expression on Sally's face was replaced with a warm smile. Somewhat amused, she thought, but in a way more affectionate than judgemental. (Reminded of someone else, perhaps? They _certainly_ didn't know each other well enough for Ashe to warrant that kind of look.) "It was a pleasure to meet you, Professor."

She hesitated, just for a second. "Ashe," she said, stepping a bit forward to extend her hand — in the muggle way, but Sally didn't strike her as someone who wouldn't know what to do with it. "If we're going to be working together on a project as involved as fixing the castle, you might as well use my bloody name."

Sally grinned, and shook her hand, warm and firm. "Of course. Good night, Ashe. I'll see you tomorrow." Releasing her, she took a step back, held a hand out toward the apparition. The half-present woman skipped forward, wrapped an arm up with Sally's. With a last nod from Sally, and a slightly unsettling smirk from the apparition, that odd flash of magic rose, a maelstrom of light and shadow twisting around the two of them.

And in a blink, Ashe was alone in the corridor, the night still and quiet once again.

* * *

[Svíþjóð] — _Sweden in Old Norse, specifically the historical region of Svealand the modern name of the country ultimately comes from. The "dales" Sally is referring to are the valleys in western Svealand, mostly in the province of Dalarna. (The name of the province literally means "the dales".)_

_And some of my Hogwarts/Founders worldbuilding finally comes up in something! Wooo! Yes, the castle really does have a soul, sort of — the wards were started with a sacrificial soul magic ritual, done to create a sort of governing intelligence over the wards. There are reasons why they did it that way, but it's complicated and esoteric, and not particularly important. All that really matters is that Hogwarts has preferences and a will of its own, even if they're a bit alien and incomprehensible. After all, a bloody **castle** isn't going to see things in the same light as people, just by nature._

_Next chapter will feature the arrival of the Irish. I should get started on that. Good fun._

_—Lysandra_


	21. Diplomacy

While the muggles recovered from the disorientation of the group portkey, Síomha stared to the north, at the castle looming over the lake in the near distance. It occurred to her, belatedly, that she'd never actually been to Hogwarts before.

She had, of course, gone to an Ollscoil back home. As influential as her family might be in post-Statute Éire, they had never been in a position to be raised to the Wizengamot, and had little presence in the social institutions of wider Britain — even if her parents had wanted to send her to Hogwarts (which they hadn't), she wouldn't have been admitted. Though, even if it _had_ been an option, she probably wouldn't have chosen to go to Hogwarts anyway. She had known _some_ English by the time she was eleven, but she certainly hadn't been fluent yet. If for no other reason, _an Ollscoil Choiteann Caoimhe Ní Bhláithín_ obviously conducted classes in Gaelic, and _Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry_ obviously didn't. No use crippling her academic prospects by taking classes in a language she was less than comfortable with.

She had _read_ about Hogwarts — everybody who'd studied much of medieval history at all had at one point or another, the institution had had an important role in the history of the Brits _and_ the Gaels. Though the Founders had been Brits — or were _remembered_ as Brits, anyway, Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had been Germans, and Ravenclaw and Slytherin had both _married_ Gaels, at least — Hogsmeade had once been a Gaelic town, and to this day existed as a British island in the middle of a largely Gaelic region. At the school's foundation, anyway, this had been unequivocally Gaelic country, of course it'd had some place in their history.

In fact, within certain strains of Gaelic nationalism, reclaiming Hogsmeade for the Gaels was one of their big issues — almost exclusively among local Gaels, it wasn't something Saoirse talked about. They were very much _aware_ of the problem, though they didn't really have a solution for it, so they _couldn't_ express an opinion on it publicly. The issue with Hogsmeade — or Scáthachluain, as the local Gaels called it — was that it was an historically Gaelic but now mostly British village, deep on the wrong side of what would be the border, should the Gaels manage to secure independence. Hard borders didn't precisely exist in the same way they did on the muggle side, but it was undeniable that the Brits would want to keep Hogsmeade as one of their major settlements, and it was undeniable that the Gaels would want it back. If the two nations _were_ to split...

When Síomha had explained the dilemma to him, as part of the background he'd been given on the current political situation before dropping himself into Hogwarts, Michael had commented that it sounded very much like the issue of Jerusalem, to him. The only major difference was that violence hadn't actually broken out yet. And it would, Síomha felt certain of that — if they didn't come to a diplomatic settlement in the next few years, there _would_ be unrest, and it would be very messy here in particular.

(It hadn't escaped her notice that, in comparing Gaelic–British relations to the conflict between the muggles of the Levant, Michael had equated the Gaels with the Palestinians. That was _not_ a reassuring thought.)

Síomha had _seen_ Hogwarts before, but only while visiting Hogsmeade, from a distance. It wasn't until this moment — looking off at the castle, the towering structure sprawling seemingly at random along the cliffs and over the lake, large and alien — that it abruptly occurred to her that she had no idea what she was doing. How the hell was she supposed to keep an eye on Michael and his people in an unpredictable magical building that she'd _never stepped foot in before_? That was just..._horridly_ irresponsible, when she thought about it.

At least she was bringing Fionn along — he'd gone to Hogwarts, was one of the few alumni Síomha knew very well at all. Hopefully having _one_ person familiar with the place, at least, would be enough to get by.

This was a terrible idea. Michael was going to get himself killed one day, she just knew it.

Her attention was drawn to Michael as he let out a low, harsh groan. He'd dressed up somewhat for the occasion, with more properly formal slacks and shoes. Though, he apparently hadn't been able to bring himself to actually wear a real suit coat, had ended up in a sport coat, thick tweed in grey and green, a Labour rose in red and silver pinned at his lapel — he looked like he'd aimed for _statesman_, but missed the mark and landed on _university professor_ instead. His hair had been mussed up from the portkey a bit, and he looked a little sweaty and pale, he and Alex at his side, who seemed just as shaken, leaning on each other a little. And they were in the best shape of the muggles, the rest of Michael's people still laid out on the ceramic floor of the train platform.

Síomha didn't even recognise most of the muggle delegation, they weren't part of Michael's core staff and she'd assigned some of her people to deal with them. Her job involved overseeing their entire team, yes, but she was mostly focused on covering Michael — the Republic had even recruited her for Michael's permanent security detail, worried mages might make an attempt at him while he was in muggle spaces and therefore more vulnerable. Which was a perfectly reasonable concern, after the World Cup, Saoirse had agreed to the proposal after very little discussion. (It was to their political advantage to keep the Republic happy, after all, permanently assigning Síomha to Michael to ease their fears was a small price to pay.) Most of the delegation would stay here when Michael (and Alex) left for Dublin again, but Síomha would be going with them, so it hadn't seemed worth it to familiarise herself with people she'd have little contact with. She could just leave that to her subordinates.

(It was still an odd feeling, having subordinates to order around. Things were moving so fast...)

His voice shaky and breathless, Michael said, "Feck these portkeys, I'll never get used to the things."

"Magical transportation does have some kinks to work out, yeah."

"_Kinks_?" Alex glared up at Síomha, the strength of it lessened quite a bit by how very uncomfortable he obviously was. "You call making whoever use the things sick up all over themselves a _kink_?"

Síomha bit her lip, restraining herself from making a joke about that certainly not being her thing, but she wasn't one to judge — by the smirk twitching weakly at Michael's lips, he knew what she was thinking anyway. "Cars used to make me sick up, you know. Aeroplanes, those are still awful, I'd rather fly by broom than go on one of those. Metal boxes moving around have disorienting effects on the ambient magic around them, I'm going to be completely miserable on the flight to India." That was scheduled for next week, and since she was permanently attached to Michael now she'd have to go with. On a _plane_. Ugh.

"Karma's a bitch, you know. And going to India, how thematic."

Síomha rolled her eyes; Michael just chuckled, because of course he did.

Around the time all the muggles were on their feet and _mostly_ recovered — they still looked a bit unsteady, but they were all standing on their own, at least — there was a gentle brush of heat washing over her back and neck, a crackling of electricity in the air as Ciarán appeared at her shoulder. "The villagers know we're here. We have company coming — Lovegood is with them, Fionn says one of the others is Babbling, a Hogwarts professor."

_Babbling_, really? Somehow, Síomha hadn't heard Hogwarts had hired a mister. Nodding, she muttered, "Let them through." In another surprisingly gentle flash of lightning, Ciarán was gone. She'd have to remind him not to do that on the grounds too much, Brits were sensitive about proper elemental magic for some reason.

Of course, Ciarán was _also_ a priest of the Morrígan, which was a _much_ more serious "crime", but he knew well enough to keep that to himself while on enemy territory.

Síomha turned back to Michael. "The welcoming committee is on its way."

"Anyone we know turn up?"

She shrugged. "Cassie Lovegood is with them. I don't know who else."

"Ah, yes, Cassie." Michael smiled, a little crookedly. He'd met Lovegood briefly, in the immediate aftermath of the riot, and they'd gotten on immediately — which should surprise absolutely no one, really. "Let's go say hello, then."

Weaving through the pack of yet-recovering muggles, they shortly got to the edge of the train platform. It took long enough that the party come to welcome them was already there, waiting at the base of the stairs. At a glance, Síomha recognised Lovegood, identifiable as much by the gentle warmth of her magic as her face, her light skirt fluttering in the autumn breeze — she idly wondered how the older sorceress wasn't bloody _cold_, low-key elemental magic, perhaps. (Of course, Fionn had told her Lovegood was a priestess of Artemis, but that..._probably_ wasn't relevant? Síomha was _far_ more familiar with the Tuath Dé, she wasn't entirely certain what Artemis was even supposed to be, but she didn't _think_ She was somehow weather-related.) And that was definitely Zabini, slightly unfamiliar in fine formal robes — by now, Síomha had actually met the woman in the muggle world more than the magical, was already more accustomed to seeing her in muggle dress.

The other two, Síomha didn't recognise. One was a woman with short, messy, dirty-blonde hair, perhaps in her fifties (or thirties, if she was a muggle), wearing a fuzzy-looking jumper and _jeans_, of all things — probably Babbling, her apparent refusal to respect the proper formalities was very much a mister thing to do. The other was an older man in a formal muggle suit, accented with a red and blue ribbon that was faintly familiar, but Síomha couldn't quite place it. She assumed this was one of the Queen's people, perhaps someone of some importance in the British Foreign Office, but she didn't recognise him.

Michael, though, obviously did. He skipped down the stairs, with a bounce in his step that suggested he'd thrown off the last of his discomfort from the portkey, bounding over to the unfamiliar man first. "David! Managed to drag you into this nonsense, did they?"

His lips twisting with a wry smile, the older man shook Michael's hand, the motion sharp and firm. "Michael. I could hardly escape, could I? They wanted _someone_ with the Irish mission along, and the Ambassador was hardly going to come himself."

"Ah, not comfortable with magic, is he?"

"I understand he took it very badly when he was read in, had to be obliviated."

Michael winced. "Poor man. I _hate_ that spell."

"Mm." A shadow crossed 'David's face for a moment, before vanishing as quickly as it'd arrived. "Hello again, Alex," the man said with a smiling nod.

"Your Honour," the younger man said, nodding back. Honestly, Síomha still wasn't sure what Alex's position was, exactly. Some sort of assistant to Michael, obviously, but the exact form of their relationship was hard for her to put her finger on. In any case, Alex still didn't seem quite well, red hair tousled from the portkey, looking a little green.

"Oh, don't mind Alex," Michael said, giving him a heavy pat on the shoulder — Alex was actually taller than Michael, he had to reach up a little to do it properly. "Magical travel doesn't agree with him I'm afraid. And I don't believe you two have met — this is Síomha Ní Ailbhe, she'll be hanging around the whole trip; Síomha, David Sutherland is a deputy to the British Ambassador in Dublin, and far more personable a fellow than that old crank."

Sutherland shot her a sharp look — he'd clearly recognised her name and was, perhaps, somewhat less than pleased to see her standing at Michael's shoulder. But he gave her a graceful nod all the same, with a perfectly polite, "Madam Síomha." (Apparently he _did_ know what he was doing, most muggles didn't realise they were supposed to use her given name.) He turned away immediately, the smile reappearing as soon as he wasn't looking at her. "I have some introductions to do on my side of the table. You recognise Mirabella, of course."

Zabini sidled a little closer, a slightly crooked, sultry grin splitting her face. "Wonderful to see you as always, Michael."

"You're a slippery damn liar, Mirabella, but you can't fool me." Despite the (false?) aggression on his voice, Michael shook her hand politely enough. (And it _was_ an ordinary hand shake, Síomha still didn't understand how muggles decided when and when not to make a gender distinction in that sort of gesture.) Michael disliked Zabini on principle, Síomha knew, but she was personally entertaining enough he could at least be polite.

Zabini quickly greeted Alex and Síomha — she'd known both of their names without being told, and her pleasantness with Síomha certainly _seemed_ more genuine than Sutherland's. (Síomha didn't trust it for a second, Michael was entirely correct about Zabini being a _slippery damn liar_.)

The introduction to Lovegood went equally smoothly, since everyone involved had already met. Lovegood did shoot Síomha a skeptical, suspicious look, but Lovegood _was_ a light priestess, under the far more divisive British model, she probably gave the same treatment to every dark sorceress she came across — Síomha didn't take it personally, and it probably wasn't meant to be. (In any case, what little animosity she did show quickly evaporated, probably Artemis assuring her Síomha wasn't any particular threat.) Babbling didn't take much longer — she was clearly familiar enough with muggles to get through meeting them without any of the stumbling mages often did — though there was an extra little diversion when Babbling stepped up to clasp hands with Síomha, properly greeting her in smooth, easy Gaelic, which also wasn't really a surprise. The misters _were_ Brits, but they often learned Gaelic, and the Babblings in particular tended to have an _absurdly_ high proportion of omniglots (that was where the name had come from, in fact). There was a bit more talking, as more of Michael's people recovered and approached, it took some minutes before they were done and ready to go.

The local mages (plus Sutherland) lead them off to the north, crossing the sett-paved street to a dirt drive, where stood waiting a brace of carriages pulled by—

Michael jerked to a stop, Alex at his shoulder let out a sharp gasp, as the creatures came into view. Before they could even ask, Síomha said, "Those are thestrals. They look a bit...unsettling, but they're completely harmless." It _was_ very odd that they were _pulling carriages_, however. So far as Síomha knew, it was simply impossible to domesticate thestrals, the very thought was absurd.

"So, muggles _can_ see thestrals, then." Lovegood sounded perfectly casual, still with that light, cheerful tone she seemingly always spoke with. "Squibs can, so it seemed likely, but I wasn't certain."

"What do you mean, are there things only mages can even see?" Michael sounded slightly absent, his gaze still fixed unblinkingly on the thestrals.

Lovegood hummed. "Not nearly as many as mages believe — muggles are more _open_ to external magic than most people think, though they obviously can't use it themselves. It's mostly only spirits muggles can't see, like ghosts or dementors, and most of those can _choose_ to be visible if they wish to be. Thestrals are odd in that there are mages who can't see them too — they are visible only to those who have seen Death — and I didn't know if it'd apply to muggles. Apparently it does."

There was a bit of muttering going through the rest of Michael's people, those who could see the thestrals describing them for the ones who couldn't, discussing the revelation that _a school_ had domesticated creatures that could only be seen by people who had _seen someone die_. Alex, Síomha noticed, had gone a bit paler than he'd already been from the portkey, Michael looking rather more solemn than usual. She didn't know if they had before, but they'd certainly seen Death at the World Cup Riot — she'd personally killed people right in front of the both of them, at least one in plain view.

(The way the two men looked at her sometimes, she knew they'd never forget it.)

After a bit of shuffling around — Síomha wanted all of Michael's people to be accompanied by at least one of Saoirse's at all times, just in case — they were all settled into carriages. Michael's had only Alex, Síomha, and James, one of the muggles on Michael's security detail disguised as another assistant for the occasion. (James had been at the World Cup, had insisted on going along to Hogwarts — he trusted Saoirse, rather more whole-heartedly than initially since Síomha had gotten clipped by a curse meant for Michael, but the Riot had _not_ left him with a good impression of mages in general.) Before the carriage had even jerked into motion, Alex, still looking a bit green, slumped over, resting his head on Michael's shoulder. Michael gave the top of the younger man's head a somewhat exasperated look, before letting out a huff, shifting his arm around Alex to settle in more comfortably.

Síomha frowned, watching the ease with which they sat together, Michael's hand tracing over Alex's shoulder. That would...sort of explain some of the more confusing things about the two of them. "You don't have to hide it, you know."

Michael raised an eyebrow at her. "Hide what?"

"I certainly don't care. And such things are...far less controversial among mages — you needn't hide your relationship so long as you're at Hogwarts, if you like."

Alex abruptly sprung upright, putting distance between Michael and himself so quickly he might well have apparated. "No, we're not— That's— We—"

James burst into laughter.

His face going nearly as red as his hair, Alex kicked James in the shin. "Shut the _fuck_ up, James!"

"Set you down, you bleeding puff, I don't mean nothing for it. It never stop being funny, sure."

"I'll show you funny, you—"

"Boys." The building argument cut off immediately, both men turning to Michael wearing different shades of embarrassment. "Maybe don't bloody each other straight afore we get to the Castle. We don't wanna give too bad an impression, do we?"

"No, sir." "Sorry, Michael." James and Alex shot each other last irritated glances, before the former slipped back into formal passiveness, the latter shuffling over to lean against the opposite side of the carriage, staring out the window. Settling in for a good sulk, it looked like.

Michael turned back to Síomha, smooth and casual, as though nothing at all notable had happened. "I haven't nothing against that sort of thing, of course, but there's nothing to hide. Alex and I are not and have never been involved."

Okay? From how Alex had reacted to James just then, Síomha got the _very_ clear feeling he was gay, but...

Nope, she was just more confused than she'd started.

The rest of the ride passed in stiff silence, but it fortunately didn't last very long. A couple minutes in, a thick wave of magic swept over her skin, tingling like static in the air — that would be the famous Hogwarts wards. Síomha relaxed, opened herself up to them for a moment. It didn't _feel_ like they were attracting any attention — the wards were obviously _huge_, a concentration of magic unlike anything she had seen outside of certain ancient ritual sites, but none of that power seemed to be focused on them — which was very odd, when she thought about it. She'd been under the impression Hogwarts was, supposedly, the safest place in the country. True, they would have had to loosen the wards somewhat to let all the guests in, but this felt far too..._passive_.

Síomha considered warning Michael the wards appeared far less active than they'd expected, but ultimately decided not to say anything. He'd already been informed they were walking into potential danger, that the wards weren't quite so thorough as the school's reputation suggested changed very little. She _would_ tell Fionn later (assuming he hadn't noticed already himself), he'd put his own palings over their rooms, it was fine.

Personally, Síomha better trusted palings set by a priest of Bríd than wards designed eleven hundred years ago by some lesser mortal. Fionn was on their Hogwarts team for a reason.

A couple minutes after that, their carriage trundled to a smooth halt. Síomha moved first, pushing open the door and pausing for a moment on the step. The castle loomed directly above her now, enormous double doors of thick wood stretching six metres over her head — the surface was intricately carved with designs and the occasional identifiable shape, trees and flowers and little figures, but the years had not been kind to it, eleven centuries of erosion wearing down the relief until it was barely visible — around it walls of angular stone, far above her head the parpets contorting into twisting curves, accented here and there with brass and iron, gleaming in the sun. Beyond the hall stretched the main body of the castle, the steep stone wall hardly visible from this angle, the tips of several towers reaching for the sky.

Somehow, for all that she'd read about the place, seen it from a distance, it had never quite occurred to her just how bloody _huge_ Hogwarts was. Seriously. It was probably bigger than an Ollscoil all put together, and she _knew_ the student population here was much smaller. She couldn't imagine what most of that space was for...though they probably weren't using most of it — that they had the room to house all their guests certainly suggested as much.

Arrayed in the courtyard, just outside the main doors, was a small crowd of people waiting to greet them. At a glance, Síomha recognised Dumbledore, at his back a pack of men and women who were probably school professors — the only one Síomha recognised was Severus Snape, and him only due to the controversy over his time spying in the Death Eaters — and Bartemius bloody Crouch — the Director of International Cooperation had a trash reputation in Éire, enough Síomha barely restrained a scowl when she spotted him. Unless she was _very_ much mistaken, that was the Queen of Britain standing over there, slightly removed from the Hogwarts people, accompanied by a handful of men and women in an eclectic mix of muggle and magical dress.

Seeing nothing that stuck out to her as any particular threat — though those mages around Victoria looked plain _nasty_, they were also obviously bodyguards, doing the same job for the British Saoirse was for the Irish, nothing to worry about — Síomha stepped the rest of the way down, sidling out of Michael's way. He bounded down the steps the moment the exit was clear, took a moment to look around, his head tilting back to take in the towering, asymmetrical edifice of Hogwarts.

Once the carriages were emptied of Michael's people, he finally made for their hosts, trailed by Alex and flanked by one of his deputies, a somewhat older man named Cian Ó Dochartaigh. (Though he insisted on calling himself _Keane O'Doherty_, much like Michael used 'Cavan' instead of the proper Ó Caoimháin, because Irish muggles couldn't speak their own bloody language anymore.) Cian would remain at Hogwarts, the head of their delegation here while Michael was away on other business, so it _was_ rather important he be here for the introductions. Though, as Síomha understood it, they didn't exactly get along — Cian was a member of Fianna Fáil, who Michael's Labour _were_ currently in a coalition government with, but their politics didn't agree very much at all (Michael being a 'radical' 'socialist' by muggle standards). Fortunately, they _did_ agree on their stance both with the mages _and_ the situation in Northern Ireland, so Michael wasn't particularly concerned leaving him in charge here while he was away.

The things Síomha picked up listening to Michael complain, she'd known virtually nothing about muggle politics a year ago...

Both Dumbledore and Crouch straightened, clearly expecting Michael to make for them first. Michael, being Michael, steered sharply to the right, making directly for the muggle Queen instead. Because of course he did. "Good day, ma'am," he said once he was in a polite conversational distance, his voice bright and cheerful. He did dip his head in a nod, which she thought was actually very rude — she'd been under the impression a bow would be appropriate dealing with royalty, even when not one of the sovereign's people, that it was just polite. "Fancy seeing you here," he added...which _also_ seemed very rude.

Maybe Síomha was just missing something, because none of the Brits seemed particularly offended, or even surprised. Victoria herself even looked a little amused, a corner of her lips curling. "Good day, Mister Cavan. Still as brash as ever, I see — and I had wondered whether a bit more time as Tánaiste might serve to moderate your behaviour somewhat." She pronounced "tánaiste"..._mostly_ correctly, better than even some of Michael's people managed (though Síomha had gotten used to the muggles' incorrect pronunciation by now).

"Oh, you know me, ma'am."

"I suppose I do."

After engaging in pleasantries a little bit longer — mostly consisting of Michael and Victoria teasing each other, which was interesting, Síomha would have to ask about that later — they eventually went on, introducing each other to their people, accelerated somewhat by many of them having met before. They were mostly public servants working in international relations, after all, they moved in the same circles. She noticed _most_ of Michael's people didn't bow to Victoria as she'd been led to expect they should, so...maybe it was just an Irish thing? She knew the Republic had rejected the British crown not so long ago, recently enough Anglo–Irish relations could still be a little diplomatically fraught, maybe there was something going on here she hadn't been properly read in on.

She might not get the implications of all this, but when her turn did come up (close to the beginning of the list, though after Cian and a couple others), she mirrored the muggles. Might as well present a united front while they were at it.

(Michael might think she was a political novice, but she could at least recognise it when it was happening and stay out of the fucking way.)

Shortly after her own introduction, one of Victoria's men quietly shuffled toward her, skirting the edge of the crowd. "Sir William Langley," he muttering, offering his hand. "I'm in charge of Her Majesty's security while she's at Hogwarts."

Oh. Okay, then. "Síomha Ní Ailbhe." She took his hand, somewhat surprised when he shifted forward, so they ended up clasping arms in the Celtic style in place of the muggle handshake. Someone had done his research...or was just very _old_. He was certainly a sorcerer, the cloud of magic floating around him was unmistakable, her skin tingling where they touched, but he almost seemed _too_ powerful, in the manner of an ancient metamorph doing their best to hide how completely overwhelming they were. Interesting.

William Langley... Did she know that name? It sounded vaguely familiar — and not just because the Langleys had been one of the Founders of the Wizengamot, no, it was something else. But she couldn't place it. Hmm.

"I'm one of the coordinators with _na Fianna Comhchoiteanna_, and— Hold on a second." Síomha glanced over her shoulder, picked out Fionn and Clíodhna, and gestured for them to come up. They'd be looking after things while she was off with Michael, if William was looking to coordinate security with Saoirse in the long term he should really be talking to them.

By the time Michael and his people were done with the muggles, Síomha had finished introducing Fionn and Clíodhna to William. She slipped back to his shoulder, trailing him as he sidled over to the Hogwarts people (plus Crouch). It was actually Crouch Michael spoke to first, bouncing over and offering his hand. "Director, pleasure seeing you again." Lying through his teeth, of course, but he sounded pleasant enough, Crouch might not be able to tell.

Crouch hesitated just a second too long before shaking Michael's hand — not out of any intent to be rude, Síomha didn't think, just on his back foot from Michael being Michael. "Hello again, _a Thánaiste_. You didn't have too much trouble getting here, I hope."

"No, no," Michael said, with a careless flick of his fingers, "no problem at all — though I must admit, I _do_ hate portkeys."

"I meant— Well, I'm not certain if this was explained to you, but Hogwarts is warded to deflect muggle attention. In fact, I believe the entire valley is."

Michael tensed slightly. Sounding a bit exasperated, he drawled, "Yes, I was informed, but our friends in Saoirse were kind enough to provide enchanted artifacts that insulate us from those particular spells." Síomha noticed both that Michael hadn't said exactly what form these artifacts took — plain steel rings, because they were relatively innocuous and unobstructive — and that his fluency with speaking of magic had improved dramatically since they'd first met. Putting those lessons to good use, it seemed.

He was also _very_ annoyed, but Síomha wasn't surprised by that — Crouch had slipped a little bit into the _poor ignorant muggle_ tone Michael hated so much.

Crouch was then quickly introduced to Cian, who he hadn't met, and Alex, who he had. Rather abruptly, Crouch steered the conversation again, half-turning to Dumbledore at his side. "And, of course, you've met Albus Dumbledore."

"I haven't, actually."

Cutting himself off in mid-sentence — already introducing him to Dumbledore, complete with all the formal titles Michael hated — Crouch blinked at Michael for a second, temporarily flummoxed. "You haven't? He was at the World Cup."

"Mm, _temporarily_, but we were never introduced. He wasn't there in an official capacity, and I didn't think it quite appropriate to intrude in what appeared to be a private domestic dispute." Really, Michael had hardly noticed anything was going on at the time — he'd been rather distracted by the quidditch game. Síomha had filled him in after the fact. "Something to do with custody of the young Potter heir, I believe? Yeah, not my business."

Crouch's face twisted into an irritated grimace, pinking a few shades. Because, of course, Crouch _had_ intruded into something that had not at all been his business, and he must know Michael knew that, probably assumed (correctly) that Michael was insulting him somehow. "Oh, of course, I apologise. Yes. Albus, this is His Excellency Michael Cavan_, an Tánaiste na Poblachta Éireann_, _an Teachta Dála den Contae Chiarraí._"

"I have no idea what any of that means, you know." Michael was exaggerating — his Gaelic was terrible, but he could at least recognise those particular phrases — all the better to irritate Crouch some more, presumably.

Crouch just ignored him. "_A Thánaiste_, this is His Excellency Albus Dumbledore, Chief Warlock of the United Council of Celtic Peoples, _le Premier Consul de la Confédération Internationale des Sorciers_, Order of Merlin, First Class, Grand Sorcerer of Great Britain."

Michael, of course, stuck his hand out right away; Dumbledore, somewhat surprisingly, took it immediately. "Christ, man, you've got even more nonsense after your name than I have."

Again somewhat surprisingly, Dumbledore chuckled, grey hair swaying as he shook his head. "You live as long as I do, you find you accumulate titles like books. I have a library of both stacked up here and there."

"Mm." The handshake over, Michael stuck his hands in his pockets. "Not exactly like books, now. One is more likely to be taken away than the other — unless you mages over here are dealing with a plague of book thieves I haven't been told about yet." Throwing the imminent end of Dumbledore's tenure as Chief Warlock right in his face, because of course, Síomha couldn't expect anything else from him.

The gentle smile on Dumbledore's face twitched, dimming a few notches. "Well, that is the lot of those of us in public service, is it not? Our fate is in the hands of the people we serve, as it should be."

"Mister Dumbledore, if your actions as Chief Warlock constitute what you believe to be public service, I suspect we don't use the same definition of the phrase."

The remainder of Dumbledore's smile vanished instantly.

Michael introduced the few most important names among his people — if he were to go through all of them, they'd be standing here unreasonably long — again sticking Síomha somewhere in the middle. This time, following on her name and the explanation that she was a junior member of Saoirse's guidance commission (terms translated into English, because Michael's Gaelic was awful), which everyone here must know, and that she was semi-permanently on loan to his security detail, which appeared to be a surprise to Dumbledore and Crouch, Michael added, "I'm under the impression you'll be hanging a ribbon around her neck in a couple weeks."

Síomha didn't _quite_ manage to hold in a smirk. She _had_ been nominated for second-class membership of the Order of Merlin — and if _that_ wasn't fucking surreal — but the vote hadn't actually happened yet. Fionn's cousin Bríd fully expected it to pass, though. Not without controversy, of course, the Wizengamot did _not_ approve of Saoirse in general or Síomha personally, but the events of the World Cup Riot had backed them into a corner, politically and diplomatically. Refusing to honour Lovegood would make the ICW even _more_ suspicious than they already were that the Wizengamot couldn't be trusted to manage the aftermath of the Riot; refusing to honour Síomha (no matter how much she didn't actually want it) would further poison the already strained situation with the more strongly Gaelic elements of their own society, possibly further inflaming support for Saoirse, _and_ further irritate one of the muggle governments they shared territory with. They didn't have a whole lot of choice in the matter.

Dumbledore and Crouch were fully aware of that — the strained expressions on both their faces were really quite amusing. While he did greet her pleasantly enough, Síomha got the _very_ clear feeling Dumbledore especially disliked her, which was...weird. She _was_ a member of what was essentially a nationalist militia, but so was Fionn — he'd quickly slipped away from Clíodhna and William to join them with the mages, presumably to lend them some legitimacy by the weight of his family name — and Dumbledore was _far_ less hostile to him. That was just bloody weird, Síomha had no idea what was going on.

Maybe it was to do with how silly the British could be about the Light and the Dark. Dumbledore in particular had a reputation for very stubbornly holding onto a heavily conflict-oriented interpretation of Ambivalence. He must be sensitive enough to feel how they were aligned — Síomha herself could easily tell Dumbledore leaned toward the Light, though honestly not so much as she'd expected — so he must know Síomha was strongly aligned with the Dark, and Fionn was immersed so deeply in the Light his very soul had been irreversibly altered. (Light magic constantly wafted off of Fionn, burning like gentle spring sunlight, sometimes it made her teeth ache to stand too close to him.) So, perhaps, someone as...ideologically-minded as Dumbledore might be inclined to favour Fionn out of the two of them...

..._if_ Fionn weren't a "white mage" — his relationship with Bríd was _very much_ illegal, and unlike the Gaels, the Brits didn't quietly maintain the old priesthoods where the Aurors weren't looking. (The Ministry knew the priesthoods _existed_, of course, but they were lead to believe certain practices had been phased out centuries ago.) Well, _most_ of the Brits didn't, anyway. There _were_ the misters to consider, Fionn claimed a small number of them held to their old traditions — Lovegood, as an example, was from a mister family, thought she'd been raised outside of the clan commune — and there were a few other isolated communities here and there that might as well...and, if people like the Blacks were any indication, a surprising proportion of British society, even at its very heart, might still acknowledge the true nature of magic, even if they didn't open themselves to it nearly as often as their ancestors had. So, when she thought about it, it was very possible people like Fionn were actually _far_ more common among the British than they claimed. Dumbledore in particular, though, Síomha had been under the impression he held to more..._modern_ beliefs, let's say.

Of course, it was possible Dumbledore wasn't even aware of what Fionn was.

Personally, Síomha could hardly fathom that — priests were easy enough to identify for her, it just took a moment of concentration to pick up a particular echo in the fabric of the world around them. It was quite distinctive, if quieter or louder person to person, depending on how close they were to their god and how long they'd been in their service. But...maybe it was just easy for her to tell because she was used to it. Her clan was closely associated with the Morrígan's priesthood — she had multiple aunts and uncles and cousins in her service, one in particular Síomha was close to, she'd even been at Éimhear's induction — and her grandfather was influential in Lú's, she'd been around "black mages" and "white mages" all her life. It was kind of odd in the first place, that an entire society operated without directly acknowledging the living faces of magic, but _especially_ odd that they might not see its messengers for what they were even while staring them in the face.

But it _would_ sort of explain a lot. She'd wondered, how Cassie Lovegood and Lyra Black could just prance about freely despite _obviously_ being priestesses of Artemis and, er, _someone_ — Fionn had said Lyra's was a trickster god, but Síomha didn't know any more than that — for that matter, why Fionn and Ciarán were comfortable going to the World Cup and to Hogwarts, where unsympathetic Brits and even Aurors were expected to be. She had been concerned, for Ciarán especially, but they'd said not to worry about it, that they'd be fine. Síomha had thought that was odd, but Bríd and Morrígan would certainly warn them if they'd be in any _real_ danger, she'd just gone along with it. If most Brits really _couldn't_ tell...

Hmm. That had some interesting implications.

Michael working his way through the Hogwarts staff was sort of amusing, and not only because some of them clearly weren't accustomed to dealing with muggles and had no idea what to do with him. Only a fucking idiot wouldn't have noticed that Michael didn't much like the Chief Warlock, and..._most_ of the staff didn't appear to be complete idiots. Those who had noticed met Michael with either shortness, irritated with him for insulting their Headmaster to his face, or amusement, tickled for the same reason. Síomha watched each interaction, taking note of which way each professor leaned — those more closely aligned with Dumbledore, or simply inclined to dislike Michael, would have to be watched more closely.

Probably the greatest surprise in this bit was Snape. Síomha had expected he would be one of their larger concerns while at Hogwarts — he _had_ been a Death Eater, after all, however supposedly reformed — but he was surprisingly affable. (Cold and flatly sarcastic, of course, these things were relative.) Normally, Síomha might not buy that for a second, but he also shook Michael's hand in the muggle style without an instant of hesitation, and knew what the rose at his lapel meant without needing to ask — even Síomha hadn't known that, and she had _far_ more contact with muggles than most purebloods. That was interesting. Maybe the whole spy line hadn't just been shite.

Síomha would still keep an eye on him, of course, but she had the feeling Snape didn't pose nearly as much of a threat to Michael as she'd initially assumed.

"About time to move on, then? I understand you've got lunch on in there, and we'll want to run up to our rooms first quick."

Dumbledore plastered on a pleasant, and very fake, smile. "Actually, Mister Cavan, according to the itinerary we were sent, Ambassador Delacour should be showing up at any moment. It might be easiest for us to wait out here for them to arrive.

"Oh?" Michael glanced at his wrist — his watch was electronic, but Fionn had shielded it for him months ago now. "So I see. Alex, Keane and I'll stay here, but if you want go up with everyone else and check out our rooms, make sure everything's squared away? If ye don't come back before the French, go on in and find me."

Alex nodded, ducked away. For a little while, there was a bit of noisy shuffling, most of Michael's people (shadowed by most of Síomha's) filtering through the crowd before the doors, lead into the school by a pair of student prefects. Michael staked a place for himself between the mages — Zabini had joined Crouch, but Hogwarts staff still greatly outnumbered the Ministry representatives — and the muggles. Cian was actually buried in the latter delegation, having a muttered conversation with one of their officials — getting started in on his work for the season, presumably.

Síomha was half-listening to Michael's banter with Babbling, so she didn't notice Fionn and Ciarán slipping up behind her until they were but inches away. A glance showed solemn, wary expressions on both their faces. "What is it?"

The pair glanced at each other, silent for a second, before Fionn sketched a rune in the air, a flick of his fingers triggering the spell, a privacy paling washing over them. "We're both getting whispers."

From their goddesses, they meant — both Bríd and Morrígan had ties to fate and prophecy, Their priests tended to get hints of danger before it arrived. There were very good reasons Saoirse tried to recruit among both priesthoods in particular. (Of course, the more religious Gaels tended to already support breaking from the Ministry, for the obvious reasons, so they happened to be among the segments of Gaelic society most friendly to Saoirse to begin with.) If they were _both_ being warned at the same time, it couldn't be good. "Whispers of what?"

"I'm not certain," Fionn said, sounding very distinctly frustrated. Which wasn't new, when it came to the hints he got from Bríd — he'd complained to Síomha more than once that Her warnings often weren't nearly so explicit as he'd like. "It doesn't feel like bloodshed, exactly, but..."

Ciarán shook his head. "It's not a battle." Their instincts tended to be most accurate when it came to anticipating bloodshed, both of their goddesses being relatively violent (though distinct aesthetically), so if it _were_ an approaching battle they were feeling it'd probably be clearer. "It's more like... Have you ever been to a Convocation?"

Despite herself, Síomha couldn't quite hold in a shudder — that wasn't something she particularly enjoyed remembering. Every nine years, there was a gathering of all the important institutions in Gaelic society — representatives from the major clans and the various priesthoods and certain industries, particularly schools and clinics — to discuss the state of their people and what common projects should or should not be undertaken in the years to come. While there _was_ always serious business being conducted, it was also an important social event. Announcements of new betrothals coming out of that time were particularly common.

Frequently, members of the thin but persistent population of immortal Gaels — mostly metamorphs, but a few who persisted through darker means — would drop in to visit, particularly those who were private enough they were rarely seen, or ancient metamorphs who had otherwise left their homeland behind. Many of these people could be _very_ intimidating, magically powerful enough Síomha had trouble breathing in their presence (at least, before she'd started coming into her own power), or simply because they were sharp and strange, a consequence of their upbringing in a wilder, often more violent time. They were sometimes unnerving just to be around.

There had been a Convocation when Síomha had been twelve, she'd been brought along. She distinctly remembered, one day toward the end of the season, they'd been gathered for a meal when they'd suddenly gotten an uninvited, unexpected guest. Not just another metamorph, or someone of the like, no, someone much more powerful, much older, much more _dangerous_ than any ordinary metamorph.

Síomha was certain there was nobody in the _world_ who could possibly forget meeting the Night Queen. It had been the single most terrifying thing she'd ever experienced — and she was including fighting for her life against murderous mages and werewolves and vampires.

(She didn't like not being the most powerful mage in the room. She _especially_ hated being stuck with people who could squish her like a mildly irritating insect.)

"Thank you for reminding me of that," Síomha grumbled. "What are you trying to say?"

Ciarán shrugged. "I don't know if you noticed, exceptionally powerful individuals, when they walk the earth the earth responds. The land bends to accommodate them, living things turn toward them, like plants seeking the sun."

"The most powerful of sorcerers are part of the world in a way most of us are not," Fionn said, nodding in wary agreement. "Once one is connected deeply enough to Magic, one becomes something both more and less than mortal — in a way, halfway along the road from humanity to divinity."

Síomha felt an eyebrow tick up her forehead — that was an...odd way to put it. Especially coming from a servant of a _real_ bloody god. "Okay. You're saying one of these exceptionally powerful people is coming to Hogwarts. It couldn't just be William over there you're feeling, could it?" He _was_ hiding it rather well, enough it wasn't distracting, but she doubted any degree of self-control would be enough to completely insulate himself against divination.

Fionn shook his head. "No, not him. To get an echo like this... He's not nearly powerful enough."

"He's not nearly _many_ enough."

Síomha stared at Ciarán in shock, the implication setting her aback. But, she noticed, Fionn didn't seem surprised at all, just looking back at Síomha with an uncharacteristic quiet solemnity, matching Ciarán's almost perfectly. (It was almost eerie, how in tune they were at the moment.) It took her a moment to find her voice. "You mean, _more than one_?"

"We can't be sure how many. But several, certainly."

"More than that, the world feels shallow here — and not just because it's Samhain. I can't tell you who, but I feel certain several ancient men and even the gods themselves will soon walk the halls of Hogwarts."

"Fuck me." Síomha sighed, rubbing at her face with both hands. This _bringing the muggles to Hogwarts_ idea had been insane from the off, but now there were going to be who know how many immortals around? And Fionn had said _the gods themselves_ — if she had to deal with _fucking divine manifestations_ on top of everything else...

This was a _terrible_ idea. Michael was going to get himself killed.

(And she'd really rather he didn't — the bastard was starting to grow on her.)

With another sigh, she dropped her hands, shooting a beseeching glare up at the sky. "All right. I.D. them for me if you can. We'll have to watch them more closely than the others, but don't make a nuisance of yourselves. We don't want to start a fight with a _fucking_ immortal if we can help it."

They both nodded, Fionn dispelled the paling, and in a blink they were gone.

"Something wrong?" Michael muttered.

She shook her head. "It's not urgent, I'll tell you later."

His eyes narrowed slightly, in suspicion or perhaps concern — which was slightly unsettling, Michael was getting _far_ too good at reading her. But he turned back to Babbling, dropping the matter for now.

It was perhaps another five minutes or so before another train of carriages emerged from the trees, the rattling carried on the wind, but the skeletal winged horses eerily silent. They trundled along for another couple minutes before finally reaching the courtyard, clacking on the stone, the procession coming to a smooth, simultaneous stop. Some of the doors opened immediately, a small handful of men and women wearing ceremonial dueling robes in the blue, red, and yellow of the Swiss Guard. There was a brief pause, the air flickering with magic as the Swiss cast detection charms.

Then, with a flash of dark magic tingling against her skin, a pillar of black-purple flame appeared in front of one of the closed carriages. The unnatural fire roared, the sound carrying over the gasps from people all around Síomha, but only for an instant, vanishing to reveal a person now standing in its place. Looking very Near Eastern, dark-haired and brown-skinned, the man wore what Síomha suspected was a uniform, but in an unfamiliar design, plain brown dueling leathers partially hidden by cloth draped over one shoulder and wrapped low around his hips, deep black stitched with gold. Like the men the muggle Queen had brought, this one was armed with more than just a wand — knives were strapped along one arm and both shins, a short sword at one hip and a longer one at the other, scabbards glittering gold and red and purple in the sunlight.

Síomha had absolutely no idea who that was, or what organisation that uniform was from (she assumed it was a uniform, anyway), but she didn't need to to know _what_ he was — those dark flames were _very_ distinctive. Apparently, the Ambassador from the ICW had decided to bring a lilin bodyguard with him. Because Death Eaters and immortals and _bloody gods_ weren't enough, now they had to add fucking dark creatures into the mix. Perfect.

Wait a second. Hadn't Dumbledore said the Amabassador's name was _Delacour?_ Wasn't that a veela name?

...Had the ICW actually been _insane_ enough to send a veela as their representative to Hogwarts? They _had_ to know dark creatures weren't nearly as tolerated here as they were on the Continent, what were they _thinking?!_

Just, son of a _bitch_, they hadn't even been here for an hour yet and things were already going wrong...

As the lilin reached up to the carriage door, Síomha leaned a bit closer to Michael, muttering in his ear. "That man's a lilin — dark creature, have _very_ dangerous fire magics." And insidious mind-influencing powers too, of course, but Fionn had already conducted a ritual to shield Michael from legilimency and compulsion weeks ago, he should be fine. "Keep your distance if at all possible, avoid provoking him if you can't."

A man was stepping out of the carriage, probably their Ambassador. Wearing Continental-style robes in black and blue — which looked rather casual to British eyes, formal dress had simplified quite a lot in the rest of Europe over the last century — his face accented with a dramatic goatee that honestly did _not_ match the warmth of his smile, he was surprisingly short and plump. Surprising because, well, who had ever heard of a veela being even _slightly_ overweight? He must be human, just otherwise attached to the veela family somehow. (She would wonder if the name weren't just a coincidence, but that he had a lilin bodyguard along strongly suggested it wasn't.) She knew there were humans born into their clans — they did need to feed off of humans to survive, after all, they'd long kept some, like people raising sheep — and humans did marry veela or lilin on the _very_ rare occasion — as Síomha understood it, veela (and their captive humans) didn't practise marriage among themselves, it was a somewhat alien concept to them. So, this was probably a human who'd been born into the veela or married one, either way.

Michael was only half-watching the ICW delegation put themselves back together and approach the castle, half-turned to Síomha. She didn't quite know how to read that narrow-eyed look he was giving her. Confused? Exasperated? "I was under the impression 'creature' was meant to refer to animals, and 'being' to people — if that man's a lilin, then lilin are obviously beings and _not_ creatures, right?"

Síomha didn't bother attempting to answer that question. Partially because she wasn't certain how. (He wasn't _wrong_, strictly speaking, but...)

Delacour and the rest of his delegation made for the Hogwarts and Ministry people first — he was an ICW official, supposedly, it was likely the only faces he recognised were Dumbledore's and Crouch's. Though, partway through the rather lengthy process (Dumbledore had seemingly brought his entire bloody staff), Snape came up, and Delacour seemed even more cheerful and friendly than he'd been with the others, they must have met before. (Not that Síomha could imagine why they would have.) After getting through the interminable introductions, Crouch led Delacour down the line, coming toward Michael.

"Pardon me," Delacour said, interrupting Crouch's very proper recitation of Michael's credentials, "is that _le gallois_? That is, I don't speak _gallois_." There was a noticeable accent to Delacour's English — Aquitanian, she thought, not actually _French_ French, though the difference was small enough it hardly mattered — but it was clear enough he was perfectly understandable.

Michael shook his head. "_C'est l'irlandais_. I don't speak it either, not really, I honestly don't know what most of that even means. I assume he's saying I'm the deputy prime minister of the Republic of Ireland, and I _think_ I hear T.D. in there, but the rest is beyond me." Yes, he _was_ hearing _teachta dála_ in there...though Crouch said Michael was simply the _Teachta Dála_ from Ciarraí, but she was pretty sure his constituency composed only part of the modern muggle county of the name. Odd that he would bother to say all that in the proper Gaelic, and still get it slightly wrong...

"Deputy..." Delacour's eyes went wide, his voice stalled for a second. "That is, _la république d'irland que c'est_— You are speaking of the non-magical government in Ireland, yes? Pardon me, I only didn't know your country had been invited to send a representative!"

"Yes, it was a surprise to us too. Not a bad surprise, I hope, Mister..." Michael trailed off, offering his hand.

Delacour took it with more energy than was probably necessary, clasping the back of Michael's with his left, brightly grinning. "Delacour, Mister Cavan, Régis Delacour. When I am not being sent to frigid Scotland to watch children compete in school tournaments, I am ambassador from the _Confédération Internationale_ to the People of...you would say, southwestern France. _Gasconha e Lengedòc_."

"'People'...?" So Michael had noticed the peculiar emphasis Delacour had put on the word too.

"Ah, yes. You do know, there are other people in the world, not just humans, yes?"

Michael nodded. "I haven't met any, I don't think, but I'm aware they exist."

"Yes, it is my wife's people I speak of. The People of the Song, they call themselves. There are less formal terms, some polite and some rude, but I don't know what they might be in English, I'm afraid."

"Oh, is that common? Mages marrying non-human beings, I mean."

"Not exactly _common_, no, but..." Delacour trailed off, finally releasing Michael, ending the extended handshake after what seemed like far too long. "There is, shall we say, bad blood between many of the peoples of our world — too often, we humans have not been particularly kind to our neighbours. It is not so much of a...pervasive problem as once it had been, things are improving, but certain, shall we say, racist attitudes do yet persist among some mages, yes."

Michael shot a quick glance at Síomha over his shoulder — she didn't know what _that_ look was about. "Yeah, I did get that feeling, unfortunately. Here, it's mostly about goblins and werewolves, from what I've heard."

"Goblin?" For a moment, Delacour's face narrowed in a light frown. "Oh! You mean _dwarfs!_ Mountain elves, yes? Short, sharp teeth, master metal-workers, rather prickly sort of people?"

"Er, I don't know, to be honest. They run the bank?"

Delacour _rolled his eyes_. "_Eh bien_, but the way the economy is handled here is not normal. The dwarfs of Britain, they are bound by a contract— Never mind, if I get started I'll never stop. And I'm going to ignore the suggestion werewolves are non-human beings, because, again, if I get started I'll never stop."

"I know they're human — the whole thing reminded me of H.I.V., when I had it explained to me — but mages don't always talk like it, sure."

"Oh," Delacour chirped, his sunny grin reappearing, "_V.I.H._, yes, that's a _very_ good comparison. It's not perfect, as _le sida_ is very different from lycanthropy in the details, obviously, but it is a very helpful analogy for explaining attitudes concerning the condition. Never thought of it that way, I'll have to remember that for next time I find myself introducing new people to our world. But, I'm sorry, we must talk more some other time, Mister Cavan, but we must move on for now, yes?"

"Don't bother with the _mister_ nonsense, Michael is fine."

"Then I am Régis, please."

Then they were, finally, getting through introductions again. (At this rate, they'd get to lunch very late.) The process went smoothly until they got to Síomha. After shooting Síomha a respectful nod, Delacour hesitated for a moment, frowning to himself. "She's been recruited to... Forgive me, _Madame_ Síomha—" She was slightly surprised Delacour knew to use her given name, but he _was_ a professional diplomat, she probably shouldn't be. "—but that seems a rather...direct association with the Irish government for an organisation such as yours. In fact, it's dangerously close to a violation of the Statute of Secrecy."

Síomha kept any reaction off her face. "I am fully aware of that, Your Excellency."

"So..." There was still a wariness about him, but his expression was lightened somewhat, a hint of a smile pulling at his lips. "So, am I to understand, Saoirse Ghaelach finds itself in a position where they must be...agnostic, toward the modern state of our world."

Was Saoirse anti-Statutarian, he meant. Which, Síomha didn't actually have a straight answer for that, it was sort of complicated. When the Statute had originally been imposed, opposition had been more common among the Gaels than the Brits, and there had been some lingering skepticism ever since. Gaelic anti-Statutarians did tend to find their way into nationalist circles — if nothing else, nationalists and anti-Statutarians had a common enemy in the Ministry, so their interests were at least partially aligned — and even mainline nationalism had started flirting with anti-Statutarian rhetoric since the muggles had had their own nationalist revolution, increasingly over the last decades. So, Síomha could certainly say there _was_ anti-Statutarian sentiment within the greater umbrella of Gaelic nationalism, yes.

However, she _couldn't_ say Saoirse Ghaelach were themselves anti-Statutarian. In fact, so far as she knew, the Commission had never made a statement on the matter one way or another. _Agnostic_, that was a good word for it.

Though Síomha herself was increasingly coming to believe the question was entirely irrelevant. Strategically, aligning themselves with the muggle government gave Saoirse the best odds of surviving a Ministry effort to eliminate them — if that meant they had to adopt anti-Statutarian ideas, so be it. And, as she grew more familiar with the muggle world, she was increasingly coming to the belief that Secrecy was ultimately doomed to failure, due to the rapid development and proliferation of muggle communications technology. And Síomha felt reasonably certain it would happen within her lifetime. In her opinion, Saoirse shouldn't _openly_ oppose the Statute — if for no other reason, that would provoke a harsh response from the Ministry, likely with international backing — but they should certainly prepare themselves for the social upheaval the end of Secrecy would cause (and exploit the chaos for their own ends, of course).

But Síomha couldn't well come out and _say_ that — Dumbledore was bloody well standing _right over there_. Like Delacour (who was _apparently_ an anti-Statutarian, fucking weird), she had to take care what she said. "I can't speak for the rest of my people, Your Excellency, but I see nothing wrong with exploiting all opportunities available to us — no matter how controversial certain people might find them."

Delacour grinned, nodded, and moved on without another word. Message received, then.

The ICW delegation soon moved on, making their way toward the British muggles. Unlike Michael's people, Delacour and company observed what Síomha had been led to expect were the proper niceties with royalty, with the formal bowing and everything — apparently it was just an Irish thing, she'd have to ask Michael about that later. (Or perhaps Alex, he was less likely to be unhelpfully sarcastic.) While they were watching and waiting, Michael leaned a bit back, muttered, "I like that one."

Síomha snorted — she wasn't at all surprised. "Of course you do. He's basically you, but magical and very French."

Michael shot her another odd look. "He's practically the first mage I've ever met who hasn't been a condescending, racist arse." There must be some kind of expression on her own face, because he immediately added, "Don't you give me that look, you were just as bad at first. All these poor muggles, aren't they just so deprived and helpless — you were polite about it, at least, but I can tell when someone doesn't respect me, whether they make it obvious or not."

Glancing away to break eye contact, Síomha had to resist the urge to fidget. Because, well, he _was_ sort of right. When they'd met, she'd had _some_ respect for the institution of the muggle government — it was a country of three and a half _million_ people, represented by a state of scale and power completely foreign to most mages — but the individual people in it? If she were being completely honest, she'd been raised not to think much of them at all, and she'd never been given much reason to second-guess herself. The few muggle contacts Saoirse had, she'd had _some_ contact with them, but she hadn't considered them personally, it was just business.

That meeting with the Republic's leadership, months ago now, had been something of a wake-up call. Just, the _ridiculous_ stones they had, planning to fuck with the Ministry simply to get them to show their government some minimal degree of consideration and respect, she... Well, it'd reminded her of sitting in on meetings between the Commission before she'd joined the leadership, honestly. And since getting to know Michael and his people, she... She didn't know.

If she were being honest with herself, some of the muggles she'd met these last few months were quite a bit more impressive than most mages she knew, in their own way. She'd never had _quite_ the disdain for muggles many other mages did, of course not, but she simply hadn't even considered truly admiring a muggle to be a possibility, before.

And, this was awkward, she had no idea what to say, because Michael wasn't wrong. She _hadn't_ respected him, at first — thought of him like she would a bumbling child who didn't know what he was going into, if anything. And she _had_ grown to admire him since, but...

"I didn't mean anything by it," Síomha finally managed to get out, low and uncertain. "I... It's the way I was raised, you know."

"I know. It's not your fault, it's damn Secrecy that's to blame for this sort of thing, not any one of you. And you and most of the rest of Saoirse are much better about it now." Michael _sounded_ like he believed what he was saying, so, it was probably fine, then. "It's just refreshing to meet someone who I don't have to win over to the realisation that I'm a full bloody person. And hey, maybe Régis being around will give you plenty of opportunity to come to that realisation about other people too."

Síomha tried not to glower at him. "That's not the same thing, Michael. They're not even human."

The look Michael gave her — narrow-eyed, frustrated, and above all _disappointed_ — was making Síomha _very_ uncomfortable. (She didn't know uncomfortable _how_, or why, but certainly uncomfortable.) His voice dropped to something somewhat softer, he said, "They may not be human, Síomha, but they're still _people_. I'll get you to understand what that means one of these days."

She didn't really doubt it. Which was a slightly unsettling thought but, well, Michael could be _very_ convincing. (And she had been..._sort of_ wrong about muggles, it was possible she'd been wrong about everything else.) But she didn't let any of her ambivalence show on her face, couldn't encourage Michael _too_ much. "Still trying to make a proper socialist of me, Michael?"

His face tilting into an almost _flirtatious_ smirk — which was bloody _weird_ — Michael drawled, "Forward the Revolution, Comrade."

Síomha rolled her eyes.

* * *

[Gryffindor and Hufflepuff had been Germans] — _Síomha is using "Germans" here in a very general, somewhat archaic sense. Gryffindor was Saxon (born in modern England), and Hufflepuff was Norse (born in modern Sweden). Ravenclaw and Slytherin were both "native" Celts, born in modern Wales. To the people at the time, Hufflepuff and (to most Celts) Gryffindor would have been considered foreigners, though a lot of people in the modern day forget about that._

[though Síomha had gotten used to the muggles' incorrect pronunciation by now] — _The anglicised pronunciation of _tánaiste_, used in media and such for the position in the modern Irish government, is something like "__**tow**__-nish-tuh" (IPA: _/'tɔ:.nɪʃ.tə/_); the proper Gaelic pronunciation is more like "__**tah**__-nuhsh-tuh" (IPA: _/'t̪a:.n̪əʃ.tʲə/_)._

[she'd even been at Éimhear's induction] — _Yes, Síomha is saying she was in the room when her cousin did her dedication ritual, to what Lyra would probably consider an Aspect of Fate and Death. (The Gaels don't think of her quite the same way, though she is certainly the "Darkest" of the big three.) It really is semi-organised religion to them, they don't think of this stuff in the same terms people like Lyra and Theo do. It's actually perfectly normal for a traditional Irish black/white mage to have their close family there for their induction._

[Swiss Guard] — _Síomha is not referring to the Pontifical Swiss Guards, obviously. For a span of centuries, Swiss mercenaries were highly regarded, serving in foreign militaries all over the Continent, and were commonly found as guards in the courts of various kings and nobles. The Swiss constitution of 1874 forbade the recruitment of Swiss citizens into foreign militaries, and Swiss volunteering on their own accord wasn't illegalised until 1927. (The ones guarding the Pope are the only exception.) These laws, of course, don't apply in the magical world, the ICW's security is managed by a force of mostly Swiss volunteers to this day._

[_Gasconha e Lengedòc_] — _If any French-speakers are about to tell me this is wrong, that's because it's not French. It's Occitan._

_Like a lot of mages, Síomha is somewhat racist against other magical beings. She's not, like, Death Eater genocidal crazy person, just the "people should keep to their own" sort of mindset a lot of people have. For that reason, pretty much everything she says about veela/lilin that can be interpreted as having any kind of value judgement attached should be taken with a sizeable grain of salt. Well, except the marriage thing, she's actually right about that one — because of how veela reproduction works, it's not something they do natively, it's an imported human concept. If a veela/lilin marries, it'll almost always be to a human, because it's simply not necessary internally. —Lysandra_

_Also, RE: That thing with Michael and Alex (because I had to ask about it, I assume some of you are wondering, too) — Alex is gay, has a thing for Michael. Michael knows that, but he's straight. Alex knows that Michael knows, both about him being gay and his having a thing, which doesn't change the fact that he has a thing at all, especially since Michael is totally okay with it (while absolutely not reciprocating in anything more than a friendly, bro-ish sort of way). (Not unlike Sirius and James, in my headcanon, actually, come to think of it. Except James didn't really realise that Sirius's ridiculous devotion to him was kind of romantically based.) Michael's bodyguard James thinks this whole thing is fucking hilarious. — Leigha_

_For an additional fun thing to do with Michael and Alex's history that will probably never come up in-story: Alex originally volunteered for one of Michael's reelection campaigns partially because he was under the impression he was gay, and that's just kind of neat. (He __**is**_ _a prominent politician and also single, which is weird almost everywhere, that he's gay is a not unreasonable assumption.) He ended up being promoted into Michael's permanent office, and before long started actually __**liking**_ _him, eventually came onto him hard. Michael's all like, woah dude, no. Embarrassment all around xD —Lysandra_


	22. Beauxbatons and Durmstrang

The thing Harry liked least about Hogwarts, he thought, might be how short the days got up here in the winter. It was only four o'clock, and the sun was already setting, casting the valley into twilight. And it was _cold_, now, when the sun went down. Lyra had flat _informed_ him that he would be coming with her (and Hermione, and probably Blaise and Theo, maybe a couple of others) to some Slytherin Hallowe'en ritual thing out in the forest tomorrow night, after the champions were selected, probably around midnight or something. Standing out here watching the sun go down, Harry really wasn't looking forward to that.

Even if it wasn't bloody _freezing_ — there was supposed to be a bonfire, so that might not be _that_ bad — the idea of doing another ritual thing with Lyra was just...slightly terrifying? especially now that he knew she actually _was_ basically a god of absurdity.

Her insistence that he had to come because Persephone would want to meet Lily's kid did _not_ make the idea less terrifying.

"So about this Hallowe'en thing..."

"Samhain, and you're definitely coming," Lyra said absently, scribbling away at a stiffened scroll of parchment hovering in the air before her as though on an invisible lectern, "consolidating boredom" while they waited by writing the extra essay "Her Royal Bitchiness" (Catherine Parr, their Charms instructor this term) had assigned in retaliation for Lyra derailing their last lesson with a series of theory questions (that Ms. Parr hadn't known the answers to off the top of her head).

"What time are they supposed to be getting here?" Hermione asked, sounding just as ready to go back inside as Harry was. The entire school had turned out to greet the delegations from Beauxbatons and Durmstrang almost an hour ago.

"Minnie didn't say. Wouldn't be surprised if she told everyone to be here early on purpose so no one would be late. Meda does that sometimes."

"Well that's just—" Hermione glowered. She'd insisted they leave _even earlier_ than McGonagall had ordered, just to be on the safe side. "If I'd known we were going to be out here so long, I'd've brought a bloody scarf!"

Harry probably would've just waited inside. "Me too," he said sympathetically.

"Do you not know a Warming Charm? That was a first year charm in Sixty-One."

Hermione rolled her eyes. "Of course we do, but not one to use on _people_."

"People are, what? sixty per cent water? You can use the same one as for tea. Just don't over-do it and accidentally boil yourself from the inside out. I need a more pretentious synonym for _allegedly_."

"Purportedly? Ostensibly? What's the context?" She snatched Lyra's essay out of the air, while Harry focused on casting a warming charm on himself without straying into Blood-Boiling Curse territory. "Lyra, you _cannot_ turn this in."

There, got it. _Ah, so much better_.

"Why not? Anyone who has a NEWT in Charms _should_ know that, and the worst she can do is give me detention."

Which Lyra obviously didn't care about. She hadn't gotten quite so many as last year, Harry didn't think (yet), but she still ended up mouthing off enough to spend at least a couple of hours a week writing lines, or whatever professors made her do in detention. (Probably not actually lines — she'd refuse on the grounds that _writing lines_ was too boring, and what were they going to do? give her detention?)

Hermione's response was cut off by someone — maybe Lee Jordan — shouting over the crowd, "What's that, up in the sky?"

Dumbledore's voice, even more unmistakable than the school quidditch commentator, floated up to them from where he was standing with the rest of the professors, and Mira, Crouch, and Fudge, and the judges who were already here (no one from Miskatonic had shown up, yet, or "Slytherin" — he'd seen Professor Shirazi making her way out here with Professor Sprout and Madam Pomfrey a few minutes ago), _and_ that Michael Cavan bloke and his party (yes, Harry knew he was the Deputy Prime Minister of Ireland, but he was pretty sure anyone who'd seen him celebrating with Sirius and that Irish Nationalist witch at the World Cup victory party would _also_ call him a fairly regular bloke) _and the bloody Queen_. "Aha! Unless I am very much mistaken, the delegation from Beauxbatons approaches!"

The small, dark smudge on the horizon slowly grew larger...and larger. And larger yet.

Harry distinctly heard a girl's voice scream, "It's a dragon!" followed by a boy, "Don't be stupid, it's a _flying house_!" as though that was _less_ ridiculous. Well, maybe it was, people couldn't _ride dragons_ as far as he knew, let alone dozens of them, or however many the Aquitanian academy was sending, all riding a single dragon. But still, he'd never seen a flying _house_, either.

"It's a flying _carriage_?" he asked no one in particular as it entered the valley, skimming over the trees of the Forbidden Forest and circling around to approach the flat-ish area between the castle and the lake. It definitely was, but he had to rub at his eyes to be sure he was seeing what he _thought_ he was seeing as it landed with an almighty thundering of hooves and creaking of springs. It was powder-blue and _enormous_, pulled by a dozen winged horses which were also mind-bogglingly large — he hadn't known flying horses could _get_ that big!

Lyra whistled softly. "A dozen matched blond abraxans? Guess Mira wasn't kidding when she said Maxime and Karkaroff were planning on making an entrance." Hermione made a little _eh?_ sound, prompting her to explain. "Those horses? They're a cross-breed between aithonians, the species of winged horse closest to dragons — or, well, I guess thestrals are more similar in some ways, and aithonians in others, but that's not important, they're these huge, fire-breathing things, even bigger than those — and phatheons, which are tiny and _super_ delicate, like unicorns with wings. Pony-sized, with that palomino colouring. They're really fucking rare, and notoriously difficult to handle. Cissy was obsessed with them when she was three. Either Beauxbatons has money to burn, or they have a hell of a blood alchemist on staff, to have a whole team of abraxans. Especially all blond like that, normally they're sort of a blood-red chestnut or black. And it's a good thing Hagrid's half giant, because can you imagine a human trying to stable those things?"

Harry couldn't, which he thought _must_ suggest that the enormous woman just stepping out of the carriage ("That's the Headmistress, Olympe Maxime," Hermione muttered, as Dumbledore led a round of welcoming applause.) had been planning on taking care of them herself. She, like Hagrid, _had_ to be half giant, though given how shocked and uncomfortable Ron had been to find that out about Hagrid, Harry was kind of surprised. He meant, he'd gotten the impression most people wouldn't like their kids going to a school run by a half-giant, no matter how...statuesque, she might look, standing beside her enormous carriage, students emerging now to form lines behind her. Their uniforms matched the soft blue and white of the carriage, he noticed — muggle-ish skirts, trousers, and blazers, kind of like Smeltings, but with much less stupid-looking hats — though they were wearing what had to be non-uniform cloaks and scarves and such over them, all different colours.

"Do we even _have_ stables on the grounds?" Because Harry didn't think he'd ever seen any.

"Nope. I presume Maxime knows that, though— Ooh, Durmstrang has a _boat_!"

_Boat_ was a bit of an understatement — a massive whirlpool had formed on the surface of the lake, a mast rising out of it, followed by the rigging and hull of a ship at least as large as the carriage. Its port-holes were lit, making the whole thing seem just...eerie, somehow, all skeletal and dripping. Even more than the way it turned and sailed toward the docks with no apparent _sails_.

"How did they _do_ that?"

"I have _no idea_, but it was _awesome_. Maybe something like shadow-magic, but with water? I'm definitely going to have to check it out later."

The fascination that had been on Hermione's voice vanished at that suggestion. "_Check it out_? You can't just go poking around their ship in the middle of the night!"

"I can if they don't put up wards that can keep me out. And, let's be realistic — they're not going to be able to keep me out."

"That is _not_ what I meant and you know it!"

Lyra and Hermione's whispered bickering lasted all the way through the formal greetings between the headmasters and judges and heads of state and halfway through the everyone-proceed-back-into-the-castle part of the whole welcoming thing. That was the point at which Harry realised that the Durmstrang delegation, who had lined up behind their own Headmaster to march past the Hogwarts students (they were letting the guests go first) and looked as bored as any of the other students with the polite nonsense, included _Victor Krum_.

"Hey! Lyra! Hermione! Shut up! Did you just see— Was that _Victor Krum_?!"

He thought it was, he could hear other people muttering up and down the line as they realised it, too.

"Er, yeah?"

"_Victor Krum_ is going to be _at Hogwarts_ all year, and—" He'd been _going_ to complain that no one had mentioned it to him, but realised half-way through his sentence that there was a much more important problem to address. "—and we're _not playing quidditch_?!"

Because it had been announced at the beginning of the term that they weren't going to have time for a proper school quidditch season, what with a tournament event going on roughly every three weeks beginning at Hallowe'en. Harry (and pretty much all of the other quidditch players) had objected to the tune of, there was only one Hogwarts Champion, if they were on the quidditch team their team could replace them, why couldn't they still have regular matches?! But they had been overruled by McGonagall, to the tune of _because I said so now bug off_. And now _Victor Krum_, the _best_ seeker in the world, was _here_, and he wasn't going to see Harry play! Not that Harry was anywhere near as amazing a flier as Krum, but he...still kind of wanted him to see Harry win a match, because... He didn't really know why, okay, he just _did_.

Both Lyra and Hermione gave him an odd look. Neither of them really even _liked_ quidditch, though of course Lyra could talk about it, and Hermione generally humoured Harry when he wanted to. "You know, the quidditch pitch still exists. Just because everyone's not coming out to watch doesn't mean you can't play."

"Yeah, bet you could even ask Krum to do Seeker drills with you. He didn't retire after the Cup, did he?"

"What? No, of course he didn't, but _what_?" What planet did Lyra live on, where people could just ask Victor Krum to go flying with them? Maybe a silly thing to think, given the fact that she'd just walked up and introduced herself and Hermione to the bloody _Queen_ yesterday, but Harry wasn't Lyra, okay, _he_ couldn't just—

"Well, he's still a professional quidditch player, then, right? So he'll probably be practising himself at some point. Might as well race you while he's chasing that silly little ball around, make it more challenging. I mean, that's probably why you're not having matches, so he can use the pitch whenever he wants to, but I'm pretty sure he's not actually a big enough prick to insist on reserving it _all the time_. Maïa's right, you probably could work something out to have actual matches between House teams, unofficially, if you didn't want to practice with him."

"_Of course I want to_—" Harry cut himself off as he realised the last of the Ravenclaws had started heading toward the doors, Gryffindor was moving, now. Which meant they were leaving the privacy spells Lyra had cast around them while they waited. People were staring, the weight of their curiosity pressing in on him. "Of course I want to practice with him!" he said more quietly. "Who _wouldn't_! It's just— You can't— _I_ can't, just, walk up to Krum like he's a normal bloke and ask him if he minds me joining him to do seeker drills!"

"Why not? You asked him for his autograph."

"_Exactly_!"

"Er...what?"

"I think Harry doesn't want Krum to think he's some sort of...fan boy, or something," Hermione helpfully explained.

"But, he is. Aren't you?"

"_Yes!_"

"So what?"

"_So_, I don't want to annoy him, he's famous, he probably gets that all the time." Harry _hated_ people making a big deal about _him_ being famous, it was just...

"So...don't be annoying about it? Besides, he's just a quidditch player, and—"

"He's not _just a quidditch player_, he's the best seeker in the bloody world!"

"Yeah, but it's not like he's Tricia Mullet, and he's not even in the top ten most important people here, in the school, right now. I can introduce you if you want. Though that would be kind of silly, seeing as you've already met."

"You can't just _introduce me to Victor Krum_, Lyra!"

"That's what Maïa said before I introduced her to Vicky, and _she _doesn't know me in this universe, either. Not that she's likely to remember me at home, anyway, it's been _years_."

Somehow, Harry wasn't even surprised that someone had thought it a good idea to introduce Bellatrix fucking Black to the bloody Queen of England. Or, well, princess? Probably princess. He kept forgetting Lyra was from decades in the past as well as a slightly alternate universe. He also didn't want to be introduced to "Vicky" himself, so he (wisely, in his own opinion) said nothing on the topic.

"Er...maybe don't talk about the alternate universe thing?" he suggested, given that they weren't under privacy charms anymore. Honestly, he had _no idea_ how she had managed to hide the _alternate universe_ thing from him for a whole _year_, because now that he _knew_ he kept noticing little clues — or _giant glaring clues_, as they more often tended to be — _all the fucking time_.

"I still don't see what the big deal is. I _invited_ her. It would be rude if I _hadn't_ been part of the welcoming party."

The _big deal_ was that she'd completely embarrassed Hermione, mostly. The Queen, like practically everyone else, had just sort of accepted Lyra being insane in her general vicinity, quite possibly because not even _she_ knew what to do when faced with that level of absurdity.

"I was wearing pyjamas, Lyra!"

"So? I was wearing an Extreme Noise Terror tee-shirt." Harry presumed that Hermione had no more idea than he did which of her terrible metal bands that was. "It was a Saturday, no one expects students to be in uniform on a _Saturday_. Especially since they were early."

"That is so _incredibly_ not the point! She's the _Queen_! You can't just skip up to the bloody Queen and— I'm still surprised her guards didn't stop you, honestly."

"Well, I didn't _just_ skip up to her, I gave them the signal, first." There was a _signal_? Why was there— _How_ was there a signal? "Besides, I'm a duchess, kind of. Pretty sure that makes me entitled to speak to the Queen if I want to."

"You are _not _a duchess," Hermione said, in much the same tone she tended to use for _there's no such _thing _as a fourth-year prefect_.

"Well, no, technically I'm a countess again, since Sirius is officially Lord Black, now. And it's just a courtesy title since the Statute became a _thing_, but still. It's not like being the Queen means much anymore, either."

"Are you— You're _serious_? You—! I can't believe I've been dating a bloody countess, and I didn't even know it! I am _not_ talking about this anymore."

"So then, I shouldn't mention that I'm also the Princess of Brittany?"

Hermione's only answer was a frustrated groan. "I'm going to sit with Neville!"

"He's a king, you know. His kingdom just doesn't officially _exist_ anymore."

"_GAH!_"

Lyra giggled as her girlfriend stomped away to bully the king of a defunct kingdom into budging over on his bench, just in time for Dumbledore to stand and make his welcoming speech to the students of the foreign schools. Apparently he hadn't done that before they'd come inside, Harry hadn't really been able to hear, with all the Ravenclaws and most of the Gryffindors between him and Dumbledore, outside.

He kept it short — basically just _welcome to Hogwarts, we'll open the Tournament after the feast_ — and when he sat down, food appeared in the serving dishes, as it always did. It was kind of early to eat, but apparently they were...just going with it? No one seemed to be objecting, even though it was only, what? not even five? Kind of made it look like Dumbledore wanted to get this whole opening ceremony thing over with as soon as possible, but then, that was probably true — Harry wouldn't be surprised if he wanted to get Mira and Crouch (and the Minister, though the Headmaster didn't seem as put out with him as he clearly was with the others) out of his school as quickly as he could.

"You really shouldn't tease Hermione like that," Harry couldn't stop himself saying, on the topic of the conversation Dumbledore had interrupted. Though... "Are you really a princess?"

She shrugged. "Not _really_, as in no one owes me a coronet. We did have ancestors who were kings, and by the laws of succession at the time Sirius could claim to be High King of Armorica — a kingdom that also doesn't exist anymore, more or less contemporary Brittany. And also Cornwall and Devon, technically. We don't actually _administer _those lands these days, we just have an outsized influence on their economy because we still own a _lot_ of property and businesses in the region. Dorea was your grandmother, you could probably claim to be an earl if you wanted." Which was...a really, _really_ weird thought. "The highest title I arguably hold in a muggle aristocracy that still _exists_, is Countess. Unless I'm Lady Black, in which case, Duchess. Therefore I am a duchess, sort of, and entitled to call the Queen _Vicky_." She grinned.

"I...don't think that's how that works." By which Harry meant, he was _positive_ that wasn't how _anything_ worked.

"Of course that's how that works, because who's going to stop me? Well, I mean, Langley might, if I were to say it to her face, but. Ooh, pass the bouillabaisse!"

"The what?"

"It is that dish, there," a low, musical voice said, a graceful hand waving over his shoulder, indicating a platter of fish. Harry turned, following it back to a tall, blonde witch in Beauxbatons colours — not surprising, given her accent. What _was_ surprising was the silvery sheen of her hair and the inexplicably _avian_ feeling of her mind. He couldn't really even explain it, he was distracted by her magic, hot and sort of..._silky_ almost, not quite like anyone else's he'd ever felt, and kind of overwhelming, and, well..._sexy_, really. Which was...kind of weird? He didn't think he'd ever really thought that about _magic _before. What the hell? "If you do not mind, I would like to take it to our table when you have finished with it."

Er...what? Oh, the fish.

"Harry, aren't you supposed to be _good_ at mind magic?" Lyra said, poking him sharply in the upper arm.

"Huh?"

"Stop molesting the veela, Potter," she said, jabbing him in the arm again. "Please excuse my cousin, he hasn't quite mastered his talent for mind magic, yet. Though I _did_ think he'd been getting somewhere with the occlumency." That she said almost as pointedly as the poking. Right. Occlumency. He could do that.

The veela — now that Lyra mentioned it, her magic did feel kind of like the veela at the World Cup, Harry just hadn't put it together because that had been kind of...compulsion-y, whereas Delacour was just minding her own business while _he_ was the one being an invasive twat — cocked her head to one side, just slightly, a soft smile gracing her lips. "Of course. These things happen. My sister is about the same age, I think. She too has yet to entirely master her magic."

"Er...what?" he said, pulling back into his own 'space' — it wasn't so much, he realised, that her magic was leaking all over like Lyra's did lately, or not nearly enough to be overwhelmingly distracting, he'd just kind of walked into it, mentally speaking. "Ah, sorry about that."

"Harry, this is..."

"Fleur Delacour," the girl provided, her tone rather bemused. Harry could sympathise. Lyra had that effect on a lot of people.

"...presumably a prospective Triwizard Champion. Fleur, meet His Grace Lord Harry Potter, Earl of Kernev."

Harry felt himself go _very_ red. "Ignore her, I'm not— She's insane."

"Does kind of go with the territory. Lyra Black, Hogwarts Champion. Well met." She snagged a fish for herself before levitating the platter to the older girl.

"You know, you're going to have to stop calling yourself that when they actually _choose_ a Hogwarts Champion," Harry pointed out. It _was_ happening tomorrow, she should start getting used to the idea.

"Who do you think is going to beat me out for it? _Johnson_? Really, I'm just giving everyone time to get used to the idea. Er...did you want the broth, too?" she asked the older girl, still hovering behind them with the fish.

"No, no. Ah...it is only, we were told that we must be of age to enter our names for consideration as Champion. Is it not the same for Hogwarts?"

Lyra sighed. "I swear I've told people this a million times by now. Yes, Champions are supposed to be legal adults. No, I'm not seventeen — pretty fucking obvious, I think. I'm going to enter anyway because that rule is bloody stupid, and once I've been chosen they can't exactly make the Goblet of Fire pick someone else."

The beautiful girl frowned down at her, a tiny furrow marring her brow. "You are but a child, younger than my baby sister. You cannot believe you would stand a chance against any of us in our final year of schooling."

"Oh, but I do. The fact that you consider me _but a child_ will only make it all the more embarrassing for you when I win," Lyra shot back, grinning.

Fleur's confusion shifted quickly to active, condescending annoyance. Harry was fairly certain she didn't realise Lyra was taking the piss. (Obviously she _was_ planning on winning, but the picking a fight part was just her having fun with the older girl.) "Are all British mages so arrogant and foolishly overconfident? If so, I pity your Champion — whoever that may be. They will not even see their downfall approaching."

"It's only overconfidence if you don't have the skill to back up your claims, little bird. I assure you, I'm _exactly_ as good as—"

Harry, watching the veela grow more and more furious at Lyra's smug provocation, decided that a change of subject was in order. "Are you related to the I.C.W. judge?" He was pretty sure the diplomat from the Continent was also a Delacour, which could have just been a coincidence, but Mira had said he was usually an ambassador from the ICW to a veela colony, so... He didn't _look_ like a veela, but then, all the veela Harry had seen so far were women. Maybe the men looked different?

"_Quoi_?" Fleur said, distraction clearly warring with her annoyance. After a second or two, she seemed to realise that she was on the verge of making a scene and embarrassing her entire school in front of everyone. "Yes," she answered, sounding grateful for the change of subject. "He is my father. I have been debating whether I should enter the competition because of this, in fact."

"Why?"

Fleur hesitated. Harry wasn't sure whether she was at a loss to explain something so obvious as the fact that Mr. Delacour shouldn't be judging a tournament his daughter was in, or trying to decide whether Lyra was serious. (She was.) "Because it would be a conflict of interest?" he suggested.

The veela nodded. "Yes, I would not want to put him in such a position."

Lyra rolled her eyes. "If you're chosen, I think I can guarantee the other judges will be racist enough to make up for any favouritism, intentional or not. Well, Dumbledore and Karkaroff, at least. I'm still going to enter, even though Miskatonic decided to send Angel. Actually, she kind of told me I had to represent the House, so."

"Er. Pardon, I must have misheard... _Miskatonic_?" Fleur repeated, her eyes going wide.

"No, you heard correctly. They're sending a delegation because, well, it would be _rude_ to disinvite them. Wouldn't want to precipitate an international incident, or anything." Lyra grinned, then offered, "If you're going to keep talking, you might as well sit down," scooting over a bit.

"Oh, no, I should take this to my friends," she said, raising the platter an inch or two, sounding rather too terrified to be thinking about the fish. "Please, excuse me."

She hurried away. Lyra managed to keep a straight face until she was back at her own table, but only just.

"Lyra..."

"Yes?" she asked, still giggling.

"Do the other schools know that Miskatonic is sending a judge?"

Her eyes tracked the veela, who, after a quick detour to drop off the fish, edged around the room until she reached her Headmistress at the high table. "They will soon."

The high table erupted into a flurry of discreet motion a moment later, as pretty much everyone who hadn't been here when Miskatonic's participation was announced — Maxime and Karkaroff and Fleur's father in the lead — grew obviously agitated, while others — Dumbledore and the British Ministry representatives — obviously tried to smooth over the situation. The Queen and the Tánaiste were notably calm, managing to look a _lot_ more _dignified_ than the other dignitaries...probably by virtue of not really understanding Miskatonic's reputation, Harry thought. Though, most people probably weren't paying the high table much attention. They had wards up so the rest of the Hall couldn't hear their conversation, and it wasn't like they'd all leapt out of their seats or something like the professors had when Mira first mentioned it. If Lyra hadn't pointed it out, Harry might not even have noticed.

After about two minutes, when the gesticulating had mostly settled into dark glares sent down the table at Dumbledore and Crouch, a wave of dark magic and unnatural quiet fell over the entire Hall — like one of those moments where (generally speaking) there was a lull in conversation just in time for someone to say something embarrassing, loudly enough to be heard over a (suddenly silent) crowd. Except this one just stretched on, conversations petering out entirely and, rather than someone shouting at their neighbor that they were going to take a piss, he could hear two girls at the end of the guest table saying, "Well, that was entertaining," and "Was that _really_ necessary?"

And instead of everyone staring at someone for yelling that they were going to take a piss, Harry — and everyone else, as far as he could tell — was just staring at the two girls because...because he didn't know _what_ that was. Not a compulsion, or even a suggestion, but...like there was some sort of _something_ making them just _fascinating_. He _could_ look away — he _did_, even, turning to see Lyra beside him looking equally enthralled (so it _couldn't_ be mind magic) — but his eyes kept drifting back toward the girls.

The closest thing he could compare it to was the way he tended to find himself staring at Blaise whenever they were in the same room — not like it was _conscious_, and it wasn't a weirdly invasive sexual thing like the veela magic at the World Cup (no one was doing anything outrageous or stupid trying to get their attention like pretty much every straight man at the World Cup had with the veela, either), it was just... They were suddenly the most interesting thing in the room. Not in a way that Harry felt any real desire to actually _talk_ to them, but... He just found himself _watching_ them.

Whatever the hell it was, it was a _weird_ fucking effect.

One of them stood, her light blue Beauxbatons uniform transforming as she did into a bright green sundress, exposing freckled shoulders and highlighting the red in her loose, dark hair. She wouldn't have looked out of place in California, but definitely did here, especially since it was _October_. "You told me we could make an entrance! Anyway, they know we're here, now, we might as well go say hello. Come on!"

The other girl sighed, rising to her feet as well. She was taller than the one who'd apparently cast whatever weird spell that was, and looked a bit older, but not _much_ — still young enough she hadn't looked out of place with the seventeen- and eighteen-year-old students. Her light hair was cut short, and her robes, when she dropped whatever illusion was hiding them, were _much_ more professional-looking. Kind of like what Hermione's mum wore in those pictures of her going to the Wizengamot, but somehow _more formal_. Definitely more sedate, a soft sort of black trimmed with grey, a silver badge pinned on her left shoulder, Harry couldn't make out what it was from here. Emma had kind of looked like an old-fashioned navy officer; this witch looked more like she was the head of MI6 or something — understated, official, and vaguely bureaucratic, but also unmistakably powerful and probably _very_ dangerous. "Fine, _fine_. Let's go be diplomats."

"Yay! I _love_ being diplomats!" Okay, Harry was going to call it right now, that one was Lyra's cousin, relative, whatever. He hadn't met her when she'd apparently stopped by over the summer, but that was _such_ a _Lyra_ thing to say.

There was a strange _twisting_ sensation in the magic around them, rippling through the hall, a moment of just... It _kind of_ felt like whatever Lyra and whoever else had done to make the top box larger at the World Cup, but nothing was moving or stretching as far as Harry could tell, just _weirdness_...and when it _stopped_ it felt like there was a fucking basilisk in front of him. Not like, in the sense of an _actual snake_, but metaphorically — a terrifyingly powerful magical presence not quite _washing over him_ like Lyra's did sometimes, still _restrained_, but undeniably _there_, _waiting_, giving off a horrifying sense of wanting to _eat him alive_, and a _mental_ presence that seemed to fill the entire Hall, coiling around and _past_ him without actually invading his mind, but he still knew it could crush his defences with a thought. It withdrew relatively quickly, but left the overall impression of something enormous and dangerous that he couldn't look at directly because it might kill him — _looking_ in this case meaning straying even the tiniest bit from his own mind-space to check it out.

Until about two seconds ago, Harry would have said that the two witches now making their way toward the high table had looked pretty harmless — unusually interesting, but certainly not like they might actually be terrifyingly powerful, potentially evil Miskatonic researchers. Now they somehow seemed more sinister than Snape (even at his most dungeon-bat-like) or Karkaroff (who had seemed a lot more intimidating leading his fur-clad students into the castle than he did now, looking around desperately as though there might be somewhere he could run off to and hide). A chill crept down his spine, hairs on the back of his neck standing up.

Lyra beside him made a pleased little sighing sound, reminding him that he was sitting right next to someone arguably as creepy, and making him feel even _more _uncomfortably surrounded.

"You know," the serious one — what had Mira said her name was? something with an _S_... — said conversationally as they strolled past Harry, "I was about to congratulate you for being subtle for once in your eternally cursed life, but _never mind_."

"Subtlety is overrated. And it doesn't seem right to introduce ourselves from the doorway. Wouldn't want them to think Leslie and Lindsay sent a couple of students and insult them before we say a single word."

The serious one rolled her eyes at her companion. "As though _you_ care about _insulting_ people."

A moment later, someone dropped the wards at the high table, allowing them to hear Crouch saying very clearly to Maxime, "I suggest you ask _them_, as they're _already here_."

Angel (probably) laughed. "Don't sound so pleased to see us, Your Excellency!" she called out toward the high table.

"We are simply..._surprised_, Magistra," Dumbledore said, rising to address them. "We were under the impression that the University would not be sending a representative to the Tournament."

"You know, we _did_ get a letter from someone _purporting_ to be with the British Ministry telling us not to come, but we decided it was probably some sort of mistake or prank or something, because otherwise we would have had to be _very_ _offended _about being _dis_invited, especially after Mira there — hi, Mira!" She twiddled her fingers at Mirabella, who seemed to be trying very hard not to notice the glares Delacour, Maxime, and Karkaroff were now aiming at her. "—_assured_ me that the original invitation was legitimate. While _I'm_ perfectly happy to be _very offended_, both the Dean _and_ the Mayor said our allies in the Federation would be very put out with us if I were to wipe this boring little island off the map — like, _cut our funding_ put out — and they never agree on anything, so deliberate misinterpretation it is."

"I would _also_ be very put out if you were to destroy this boring little island, Angelos. Especially after accepting my hospitality as you have."

Harry did a double-take at the unfamiliar voice, amplified _just_ enough to be heard without being uncomfortably loud, and he wasn't the only one — pretty much everyone at the high table glanced at the left end, then turned to stare again at the person sitting there. A man on the younger side of middle-aged, like late twenties or so (though probably older, mages aged weird), wearing what looked very much like a muggle suit, sleek black with a waist-coat a glimmering green — though without the top layer, there was a long suit coat and a matching hat hanging on the back of his chair — like the kind ordinary businessmen or politicians (who weren't Michael) wore...but somewhat old-fashioned looking, like an ordinary businessman or politician had stepped into Hogwarts right out of the 20s or 30s. His hair was _a little old-fashioned_, as Gin had called Harry's at the World Cup, in much the same way his had been then, but longer than Harry could ever tolerate his being, black curls tumbling over his shoulders, thin plaits framing his face. Harry couldn't make out his feature much from this distance, but he did notice the complete lack of facial hair, which seemed weird if this person was going for old-fashioned, everyone back then had mustaches.

He did look _slightly_ weird, yes, but the _weirdest_ thing was that he was there at all — and that he looked like he'd _always_ been there, and somehow nobody had noticed him. He had a plate, his fork set over the rim suggested he'd been eating a moment ago, a glass of wine (there was wine at the staff table sometimes, but not usually down here) cradled in one hand, and he was lounging back in his chair, looking at ease and, just, relaxed. Looking for anything like he'd been there the whole time.

But he _hadn't_ been. There hadn't even been a chair there, a moment ago! Had he just... That must have been one _hell_ of an unobtrusive charm, for nobody to notice, especially with all the powerful mages up there...

There was a bit of bickering at the high table, and muttering among the _rest_ of the tables, as yet _another_ unannounced guest appeared out of nowhere. At some point, Harry thought he heard Dumbledore ask this new bloke who he was and what the hell he was doing here (though more politely than that) — it was that the man responded to. "I don't need any particular reason to have dinner in my own damn house, Albus." The man took a sip of his wine, lightly set the glass back down on the table. "Besides, I was invited."

Harry didn't need to hear people hissing the name all around him to get who this was supposed to be: Salazar _bloody_ Slytherin.

Except he wasn't...supposedly. Harry looked a bit down the table, found Shirazi still sitting there — though, not quite looking how she was "supposed" to, her ears looking a bit longer and her eyes slightly larger, an odd pink tint to her hair, her human disguise "slipping". _Supposedly_, according to Lyra, their new Professor of Divination was actually Perenelle Flamel pretending to be a peri (a kind of elf from old Persia) pretending to be a human witch, and not doing a very good job of it. Harry had absolutely no idea _why_ someone would do that, or if he should believe Lyra's claim that she was Perenelle Flamel, who was _supposed to be dead_. (Harry was _very aware_ of this fact, what with the incident with the Stone he was sort of indirectly partially responsible for the Flamels' deaths.) But Lyra sounded very, _very_ confident about that, so he, just, went along with it, he guessed, there never really seemed to be any point in arguing over it.

But, see, Lyra _also_ said she'd invited Perenelle Flamel to be one of the judges, but since she was _supposed to be dead_, she was going to come as _Salazar bloody Slytherin_ instead — apparently metamorphs could just pretend to be other people if they wanted to, which was kind of terrifying when he thought about it. But, well, Harry had pointed out that, sure, even if she could pull off pretending to be _Salazar bloody Slytherin_ — and nobody alive remembered him, so who was going to say she wasn't who she said she was? — people would notice if Shirazi, just, _disappeared_ whenever Slytherin was around.

Lyra had said, obviously, Flamel would just cast an illusion of Shirazi whenever she had to be Slytherin. She had a lot of practice at it, after all, nobody had noticed for _centuries_ that there was only one Flamel, she'd been being one while casting an illusion of the other (switching off which was which depending on what was appropriate for each situation), and that had worked perfectly fine. She could do it again for a few months, no problem.

Harry had _wanted_ to ask if she was being serious about that, because that was _completely fucking insane_. Like, Flamel had just..._invented_ a fake husband for herself...and made up a _fictional story_ about a rock that made them immortal...and ran with it, for _centuries?!_ Okay, while that sounded like the sort of thing _Lyra_ would do, or would think was even _possible_, things like that just..._didn't happen_ in the real world. But he hadn't said anything because, well, _of course_ Lyra was being serious, that was _exactly the sort of thing she would do and think was hilarious_, there was no point questioning her about it.

So...either that was the _real_ Salazar Slytherin (which, fucking hell, scary thought), or that was Perenelle Flamel _pretending_ to be Slytherin, while simultaneously keeping up an illusion of their Divination professor (which, that was just _fucking insane_). Harry had absolutely no idea which one he should believe, this whole thing was, just, insane and bloody _confusing_.

Harry wished he could blame Lyra for these things — sometimes it felt like his life had gotten a _lot_ weirder since she'd shown up — but he knew that wasn't really fair. The magical world was just completely absurd sometimes.

Whatever was going on at the high table, with the Miskatonites and Slytherin(?), it was, he decided, Not Harry's Problem. He resolutely turned away from the building argument between the _supposedly_ competent adults and back to his own table. "So about them Tornadoes."

(Sitting to Lyra's other side, Seamus burst into breathless laughter.)


	23. From a Certain Point of View

Ashe hardly paid attention to the resurgence of formal introductions going on around her. Which, honestly, she might not have anyway — this sort of thing had always struck her as silly and very tedious, she had no idea why outsiders felt the need to observe this sort of inanity. She'd already had more than she could stand for the day. Even if she'd wanted to participate, she probably wouldn't do it very well.

But she was firmly distracted from following along with the expected niceties. And it wasn't because a man claiming to be Salazar Slytherin had abruptly appeared out of nowhere, no. If she were being honest, she still found how seriously outsiders took the whole Founders myth a bit ridiculous, but that wasn't the point. No, she was distracted by the Miskatonic delegation. And not, as one might expect, because one of the pair was _obviously_ a minor deity of some kind — the way the ambient magic in the room bent in toward her, echoed with every movement, similar to the aura of a powerful priestess, but more profound, that couldn't be anything else. (Ashe had never encountered such a being before, simply _read_ of them — what outsiders called avatars, gods walking the earth in flesh and blood — but she had no doubt what this Angel Black truly was.) One would think the bloody _god_ would have the bulk of her attention, but no.

She'd _definitely_ met the other one before. Just last night, in fact. And she'd _lied_ to her.

For some reason, Ashe found that far more irritating than was entirely reasonable.

Sarah Selwyn, she was calling herself now. In their ridiculous introductions (Ash wasn't paying proper attention, but she still caught some of what they were saying) they were completely open with the admission that that hadn't been her name at birth — though, of course, she _was_ a metamorph, they only rarely held on to their original identity for very long — but they were telling more or less the same story "Sally" had told her last night. Well, she didn't come out and _say_ the famous Ravenclaw had been her mother, she hadn't admitted it before either, but she was openly calling the man who was supposedly Salazar Slytherin "Uncle", his introductions to the staff and their other guests (because he was playing the proper host, he'd taken over) included referring to her as his niece. When asked exactly how they were related — which multiple Hogwarts staff members did, looking _very_ suspicious — they'd simply said he and Ravenclaw had been very close, and moved on. So the _implication_ was bloody obvious, even if they didn't come out and admit it. That wasn't the lie, no, that was the same as last night.

'Sally' had told _Ashe_ she was with the _ICW delegation_. She _certainly_ hadn't mentioned that _she taught at fucking Miskatonic!_

A fucking _Miskatonite_ had been _playing with the wards_, and she'd _lied to Ashe's face _about it.

It was all Ashe could do to stay in her chair, to not jump up and call the intimidatingly powerful woman out in front of everyone. Instead she silently ground her teeth, and just glared at her.

After some minutes, the introductions were over, and everyone returned to their seats. The Miskatonites were squirreled away toward the end, Charity edged away from them immediately. Though Black didn't linger, simply poured a glass of wine and then wandered off, leaving her chair empty — probably going off to irritate and/or terrify whoever struck her fancy. (Ashe wasn't particularly surprised, if Black was what she thought she was she probably didn't need to eat.) Selwyn sat alone, the space immediately around her vacated, nobody wanting to get too close to the Miskatonite.

Ashe didn't even pause to consider what she was doing. She picked up her plate and stormed over, dropping it back onto the table with a clatter. "You lied to me."

Scooping herself a helping of _something_ — Ashe didn't recognise whatever it was, probably a dish provided for the Durmstrangers — "Sarah" paused for a moment, one doubtful eyebrow cocked. "Did I?"

Ashe sank down to a seat, her glare fixed on the much older woman. "You told me you were with the I.C.W. delegation."

The woman's lips twitched with a half-hidden smirk. "If you think back on it, you'll find I did no such thing." She broke eye contact, turned back to serving herself — casually, as though she hadn't a care in the world, didn't even notice the suspicious stares and whispers all around her. "I said I was here checking out the wards ahead of the arrival of the delegation from the I.C.W. — I never actually claimed to be _part_ of that delegation."

"You certainly _implied_ it!"

"I can hardly control what you interpret my words to mean after I have said them."

"That's a crock of shite, and you know it."

Sarah glanced at her, with a hint of exasperation. "Honestly, Ashe, can you really blame me?" She turned away again, said to Charity, "Professor Burbage, if you would pass the gravy there?" Charity, of course, just stared back at her, eyes wide with a mixture of surprise and suspicious doubt. After a brief moment, Sarah tapped the table, the tureen lifted from the surface and floated over to her on its own. Sarah turned to Ashe again, with an expression that very clearly said, _See what I mean?_

"You and Charity were never introduced, she has no idea how you know her name. The wards told her, Charity," she explained, leaning around Sarah a bit, "that's how she got it. She was here when the Founders set them, they like her. She's not pulling it out of your head or anything."

Charity only seemed _somewhat_ mollified, but at least she wasn't quite so terrified anymore. "Right. Of course. Er, my apologies, Magistra, I didn't..."

"It's quite alright, Professor, I understand completely. Our institution does have a certain reputation in Britain." And Sarah herself was _obviously_ an absurdly powerful mind mage, that didn't help. She turned back to Ashe, that doubtful eyebrow ticking up again. "If I'd come out and told you I was from Miskatonic last night, how would you have reacted?"

"Well..." She didn't know, actually. It wasn't like she'd ever dealt with that sort of situation before. "I suppose I would have wanted to warn Dumbledore...but I also wouldn't have wanted to leave you alone, to get up to who knows what. I don't know what I would have done."

"That discussion certainly wouldn't have gone the same direction it did, though."

"Well, no." And that would have been unfortunate, she guessed — the implications of what she'd learned about the wards last night were _fascinating_.

"I did dance around the truth a little, I admit, but I only did what I thought was necessary to keep our conversation civil. Besides, I never actually did lie — everything I told you last night was the truth, from a certain point of view."

Despite herself, Ashe couldn't quite hold in a scoff. "_From a certain point of view_ — who do you think you are, a bloody Jedi?"

Sarah smiled. "Many of the truths we cling to depend on our point of view."

"Oh, shut up." Apparently, the multi-centenarian metamorph had seen Star Wars. She probably shouldn't be surprised, Miskatonic had a reputation for not particularly caring for the Statute.

For a dragging moment, neither of them said anything, picking at their food — well, Ashe was picking at her food, Sarah continued to seem unbothered by the attention she was getting. And she _was_ still getting attention, the glares and the whispers hadn't actually _stopped_, though they had trickled away a bit, the anxious excitement in the room refocusing away from the Miskatonites in particular. (Or, perhaps, away from Sarah and more toward Black, who had flounced over to the Gryffindor table, grinning and giggling, presumably making an impressive nuisance of herself.) Eventually, Sarah said, "I hope you haven't reconsidered assisting me with my little project."

"What? No." Granted, the idea of spending so much time around some madman from Miskatonic was a little..._unsettling_ — the University's reputation was exaggerated, but not _completely_ fictional, there were some pretty seriously unpleasant people over there (Black served as a good example). She was rather more leery of helping with the wards than she'd been before, but _why_ had little to do with Miskatonic. "It's going to be harder for me to trust you, but yeah, I still want to help."

"I suppose that's understandable."

"It's not because you're from the University, Sarah, you _lied_ to me."

Sarah turned away from her food for a second, one eyebrow tilted in obvious surprise. "Oh. You're a Mistwalker, I forgot."

Somehow, Ashe managed to not roll her eyes — it wasn't about that, really. Yes, she _had_ been raised into a mindset where... No, it wasn't _lying_, it was _breaking one's word_ that was among the gravest of sins a person could possibly commit. Giving an oath one never intended to keep was a kind of lie, yes, but ordinary, small lies weren't a big deal. They were still _bad_, obviously, but it wasn't the sort of thing she'd hold against someone just on principle...

Except, she sort of was, wasn't she? She _was_ offended, yes, but... Okay, maybe her upbringing _did_ have something to do with why she was taking this so personally. She hadn't really considered that.

"You know, telling the truth from a certain point of view to mislead people is a very fae sort of thing to do."

Ashe groaned. "For fuck's sake, we don't _actually_ have fae blood," she said — in Welsh. She hadn't meant to, it'd just come out like that, she was _so_ fucking tired of the ridiculous stories outsiders told each other about them...

"Of course not, humans and elves are sexually incompatible," Sarah said — also in Welsh. Slightly _odd_ Welsh, rather archaic, maybe...which _would_ make sense, she'd been in America for centuries. "Without the assistance of blood alchemy, at the least, which does seem unlikely, for historical reasons. But many of the...peculiar elements of Mistwalker culture are due to more extensive contact with the local fae. I've even heard theories that they taught your ancestors their ritual magic in the first place."

Well, yes, she'd heard the same theories, but that wasn't the _point_.

...Son of a bitch. What had they been talking about again? This was what happened when she tried to operate on two hours of sleep...

While Ashe tried to remember what the hell she'd wanted to say before they'd gotten off track, Sarah just kept eating in calm silence — which was sort of irritating, the woman hadn't been able to shut the hell up last night (this morning, she was so tired), and _now_ she was being quiet, of course. She didn't manage to think of anything by the time someone swept down into a seat across from them. (To accommodate all the guests, there were chairs set up on the opposite side of the staff table, though less than half were occupied.) "Are people always like this about Americans? Seems a bit of a ridiculous overreaction to me, unless I'm missing something."

Michael, of course it was Michael. Ashe wasn't particularly surprised that the first person to get over their learned fear of Miskatonic was Michael. And she didn't mean because he didn't know better, Michael just didn't seem to give a shite. "You leave Síomha having a heart attack somewhere?"

"Oh, she'll be fine," Michael said, brushing it off. "She's used to me making a nuisance of myself at people who could easily murder me."

Surely not people who could do it _quite_ so easily as Sarah, but...

Sarah just seemed amused, the omnipresent (though quiescent) presence of the impossibly powerful mind mage on the air around them feeling slightly..._tingly_. "I suspect it's not murder she's most concerned about — feel free to inform Dame Síomha I have no intention of stealing your memories, and will never have any need of becoming a body-snatcher." Well, being a metamorph and all, she wouldn't...

"Okay, two questions — well, three, I guess. Since when the hell is Síomha a bloody _knight_?!"

At the flabbergasted look on the politician's face, Ashe couldn't quite hold in a burst of giggles. A crooked smile on her own face, Sarah said, "She will be, once she's officially admitted into the Order of Merlin. That is the proper address these days, yes?" she asked, turning a raised eyebrow to Ashe. "I'll admit, I haven't been in the country for some centuries now, I could be behind the times."

"No, it is." Her voice sounded slightly breathless and shaky, she hadn't yet gotten her laughter under control — Michael was glaring at her a little, but she couldn't help it, okay, that was just funny. She cleared her throat before trying to speak again. "Granted, the convention among mages is to use the surname, the inverse of the standard style you'd be more familiar with, but Gaels prefer the use of personal names with titles, so yes, _Dame Síomha_ would be correct."

"Right, okay." Michael stared blankly into the distance for a moment, apparently not quite sure how to process this information. "Then, what do you mean by _stealing memories_ and _body-snatching_?"

Sarah shrugged. "Those are terms for particular forms of mind magic subsumation." At the uncomprehending look on Michael's face, she asked, "Did your friends in Saoirse not tell you anything about the Dark Arts?"

"Beyond a blanket warning that magic could be very, very dangerous when used by people with malicious intent and a certain lack of morals? No, not really."

So then, over the next hour or so, Michael was treated to an extended lecture on _very_ illegal magic, mostly certain forms of subsumation, blood magic, and high ritual...just, right out in the open, at the Hogwarts staff table. Sarah didn't claim to have any _personal_ experience in any of the things she was talking about — save for basic subsumation in the form of absorbing simple spells and skimming off the top of wards (which was permissible), and some broad applications of blood magic (legal under ICW law, which by treaty were in force for the duration of the Tournament) — but it was still just...

Ashe sighed, rubbing at her cheek with one hand. This was going to be a _long_ year...

* * *

_Reminder, Ashe comes from a British subculture referred to as the Mistwalker Clans (or "misters" for short). It's a long story but, basically, they're descended from old British priesthoods, technically even pre-Roman. (Most of those traditions have been lost over the centuries, though most other Brits still have an impression of them being a bit backward and superstitious.) They tend to live in these libertarian communes, which other people also tend to find very strange, and have developed some of their own jargon — as a basic example, when Ashe broadly refers to things "outsiders" do, she's talking about people who didn't grow up in one of these weird communes._

_The Lovegoods are another Mistwalker Clan (though the Lovegoods we know weren't raised as misters, Xeno and Cassie's mother is an Ollivander, wasn't comfortable staying on the commune); the Boneses used to be misters, but have since assimilated into the nobility enough they're considered outsiders now; the same is sort of true of the Greengrasses, though not even close to the same degree — they have a "proper" manor like the rest of the nobility, but it's surrounded by a mister commune, and while the Greengrasses educate their kids in the way the nobility do things they also have one foot in the mister culture. (This is part of why Daphne is so meticulously proper, she's overcompensating a little bit, in an effort to get the other noble kids to take her seriously.) Nobody else is likely to come up, they don't tend to move in the same circles as our main characters._

_Tiny chapter is tiny. Meant to post this days ago, but we've both been distracted, will post the next one maybe tomorrow. It's the first of six that all happen on Halloween, because Lyra fucks up everything and we're completely insane._

_—Lysandra_


	24. Samhain — Impeccable Logic

"You know, I think we might have underestimated young Al," Angel said, inspecting the lit Goblet of Fire in the little annex off the Entrance Hall which was mostly used as a staging area for new students before the Sorting. "He was going to look like a real moron when Lyra inevitably broke whatever protections he put on this thing to enter herself. This way he can blame you instead."

"Thank you, Angel, I would never have realised that on my own," her companion drawled. "So, did you have anything particular in mind, Uncle? You _are_ the wardcrafter, here."

Lyra might have been imagining it, but she fancied Flamel-as-Slytherin sounded a bit uncertain, offering noncommittally, "I have a few ideas, of course. But first we should decide exactly what we are trying to do, here."

"I'm afraid I have little to contribute to any wardcrafting project. Such things are hardly my area of expertise," Delacour admitted.

"What exactly _is_ your area of expertise, Monsieur Régis?" Angel asked. "Not ritual, and you don't really feel _wizardly_. Elementalism?"

"...Human–Nonhuman Relations, I suppose you could say. I will admit that I have always had an interest in geomancy and weatherworking, but I was chosen for this assignment more on my experience as an ambassador than my academic qualifications."

"Because Marcel Moreau wanted you safely away from Aquitanian politics, you mean."

That was the Runes Professor from Durmstrang, a tall, thin, sandy-haired man in his late thirties, with just a hint of a Danish accent. He and Ashe were there to ensure that whatever the other judges came up with to keep unauthorised students from entering their names as potential champions was fair to all of the schools. Madame Maxime had declined to send someone to help, just told Delacour that she hoped he would ensure the fairness of whatever they decided to do, and excused herself — probably to discuss the Miskatonites' presence with Dumbledore and Karkaroff. Lyra didn't know for sure, because she'd been keeping an eye on the Cup since they had been dismissed from the Great Hall.

She had expected Dumbledore himself to do something to keep her (and all the other 'underage' students) out of it, and been fairly confident that she would be able to counter any protections he might cast. This lot... Well, that would be more difficult. Flamel alone could probably come up with something to keep Lyra specifically at bay — not _indefinitely_, but certainly long enough to miss the window of entry — and Ashe was familiar enough with Lyra's abilities to help her figure it out. So, in keeping with the long, noble traditions of the Triwizard Tournament, Lyra was cheating, spying on the preparations from the Shadows.

"I would never suggest such a thing," Delacour said, something in his tone suggesting that the Dane was entirely correct.

He obviously thought so, too, sniggering slightly. "If you say so. Regarding the task at hand, we could start with a simple age line. That was the solution Dumbledore suggested, back in...March? April? Some time ago, in any case."

"No," Ashe said. "Let us be frank about our task, here. As..."

"Angel," Sarah supplied. "That goes for everyone. And I'm Sarah. Sally, if you like. We don't stand much on formality at the University."

"Er...right. But as Angel said, Albus is likely primarily concerned about Lyra Black actually entering the Tournament. She's been telling everyone she's going to be the Hogwarts Champion for months now. A simple age line may keep out _most_ of the underage students, but Black can shadow-walk. Mundane defences will not keep her out."

"Should they, though?" asked..._Flamel_, of all people? Well. Lyra couldn't say she had expected _that_. "While I understand there are...reasons, legal ones, to limit the pool of potential champions, personally I can't say I agree with them."

"Ah. So when you say you want a discussion of our purpose here, you mean..." the Dane trailed off suggestively.

"Yes, I mean that if we must limit the pool of potential champions, I believe it should be based on ability and skill rather than age, or an attempt to prevent any specific individual entering."

"Like a pre-Tournament task?" Angel clapped enthusiastically. "I love it, let's do it."

The Dane spoke slowly. "We, Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, selected our delegations with an eye toward their ability to compete in the team events — the most skilled of our students, regardless of their age — on the understanding that while one of the senior students would be the official champion, that was no reason the best of the fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds shouldn't assist in the tasks which appealed to their own areas of expertise. Our best duelist, for example, is only sixteen. So I doubt that the Headmaster or Madame Maxime would object to such an approach."

"Fine with me," Sarah said. "Though we cannot make it _too_ difficult, in that case. At least one student from each school must be capable of reaching the Goblet. Ashe? Delacour?"

Ashe hesitated, giving Delacour the opportunity to say, "I cannot condone purposefully allowing younger students to participate, given the legal and ethical reasons they were initially excluded — people have _died_ in this tournament in the past, you know!"

"Yes, I'm aware. I was _there_," Flamel pointed out. "I've attended nearly every Triwizard Tournament which has ever been held. Believe it or not, I am making this suggestion with that very concern in mind. The fact that participants have died in the past hardly changes the fact that the Goblet will choose the best available representative for each school. Limiting the pool based on any factor other than ability only makes it more likely that the _best_ will not be good enough to withstand the trials of the competition."

"What if we were to include an age line _as well as_ other precautions?" Ashe suggested. "Leave that as the first challenge for prospective entrants to circumvent."

"I...suppose that would be acceptable," Delacour agreed hesitantly.

"Good," Flamel said decisively. "I was also thinking—"

"Hang on a second."

Angel's voice cut across Flamel's, the only warning Lyra had before reality shifted abruptly, throwing her back into the Mundane Plane. She hadn't been expecting it, so when gravity suddenly applied to her again she lost her balance, falling flat on her face. "What the _hell_, Angel!" Lyra hadn't even known that was a thing that could be _done_ — unless Angel had lied back in August, it hadn't been an option when she was stuck on the border between planes. And on top of that, she'd thought they'd been getting along well earlier, when Angel had skipped down to join her at the Gryffindor table (making all kinds of _barely_ veiled hints about herself and Sarah being terrifying, evil Miskatonic scholars, it had been hilarious). She hadn't thought she _needed_ to try to be _sneaky_ about spying on them — she hadn't thought Angel would just give her away!

"Well it would _hardly_ be a good task-ish challenge if you know exactly what we did and how to un-do it, would it? Does everyone here know Lyra?" she asked, helping Lyra up and throwing an arm around her shoulders. Ashe's fingers rose to her temples, threading into her hair, and Flamel rolled her eyes. "Silly question, I guess. This is my baby sister Lyra Black, the Hogwarts Champion. Lyra, this is Sarah, Régis, and Sigurd Nyberg, and of course you know Ashe and...Salazar."

"We've met, yes. Hi. And just because I was doing preemptive research on the protections on the Cup doesn't mean I wouldn't be facing the same challenge as everyone else, it just means I was smart enough to get a head-start on it," she argued — stubbornly refusing to be distracted by the glee that had risen in her chest when Angel called her her sister, or how comfortable it felt to be this close to her, like getting a hug from Eris, surrounded by the darkest of dark magic, the cold soothing and...not _safe_, but _familiar_.

_Right_, she guessed, in a calmer, less mad way than being in the middle of a riot.

Eris's amusement rippled through her mind. _Is it really so surprising that you are at home surrounded by dark magic? You _did _grow up in the House of Black._

That _was_ a good point. Before, in her own time, the Family Magic did kind of feel like this, even just sitting around and not doing anything with it. Less intense, most of the time, but similar. _Well, _no_, it's just... I didn't realise how much I missed it. I should really get back on trying to fix the Family Magic._ It _was_ still on her list of projects, she'd just kind of...not _forgotten_ about it—

"Preemptive research?" Delacour repeated.

_You forgot about it_.

"Angel, you can't just declare that your many-times-removed cousin — _not_ her sister," Sarah added as an aside to the other judges, "we are familiar with the concept of a conflict of interest, they've only met twice before today — is going to be the Hogwarts Champion, just because you think she's adorable. That's for the Goblet to decide." Sarah sounded rather exasperated, but not really surprised, obviously she and Angel knew each other fairly well.

_Okay, fine, I did. But only because there were more immediate things to take care of, and I wasn't getting anywhere, anyway. Maybe I can convince Angel to help._

("I think they call that espionage in French," Nyberg said, his tone dry enough to make Snape proud.)

Angel pouted at her companion. "I know that. I'm just saying, if the Goblet doesn't pick her, it's wrong."

There was something highly ambivalent about Eris's answering _maybe_.

_What?_

("You misunderstand, I simply marvel at the audacity of such a turn of phrase.")

("But not her spying on us?" Ashe muttered, much to Lyra's amusement.)

"Well if you're so certain I'm going to be the Hogwarts Champion, why not just let me put my name in now?" Lyra suggested. Not that she thought they would, or even really wanted them to, but she thought it was a valid point.

"It wouldn't be fun if it were easy," Angel replied promptly, then grinned. "You didn't think I wasn't going to make you work for the Cup, did you?"

Well, _no_, she hadn't. It hadn't even occurred to her, actually. "_No_," she sighed, offering her best imitation of Zee's favourite pout.

_It's nothing. I just have my doubts about whether the Dark would be enthusiastic about reviving the House, especially with the man who broke its Covenant at its head._

Angel ruffled her hair. "Go away. We have things to do."

_Obviously Sirius is only the_ legal _Head of the House. I'm pretty sure the Dark knows that. Anyway, it can't hurt to ask._

But not _now_, surrounded by people whose business the state of the Black Family Magic certainly wasn't. "_Fine_. When can I come back?"

"Sunrise," Sarah said firmly. That was the deadline they'd set for themselves at the end of the feast, telling everyone that they would have the day — sunrise to sunset — to enter their names for consideration. Then there was a strange twanging sort of feeling at the edge of her mind, the phrase _absolutely no earlier_ slipping into her thoughts as though it belonged there.

Which it _definitely didn't_.

_How the hell did she just do that?!_ Lyra demanded, fury and resentment sparking to life. That wasn't fair _at all_, mind magic wasn't supposed to _work_ on her!

_Er... Bella says you're really bad at occlumency, that's how._

Angel must have guessed what had happened by the way Lyra went tense, glaring at the mind mage and actively stopping herself reaching for her wand. She giggled. "If you were wondering who the most dangerous person in the room is, _it's not me_."

She hadn't been, though she supposed it went a good way toward explaining Angel's interest in the metamorph. Dangerous people were _fun_. There was just something infinitely appealing about annoying someone who could actually hurt you...

Well, until they actually _did_ hurt you. Then it became abruptly un-fun. _Especially_ when they brought mind magic into the equation like a complete _bastard_. She hadn't even been acting particularly annoying!

"How did you do that?" she demanded. Bella rubbing it in that Lyra was pants at mind magic wasn't really an explanation.

"Magic. Now, I seem to recall Angelos telling you to leave," Selwyn said, her tone completely flat, face impassive, no hint that she wasn't entirely serious, not playing, do as I say _or else_. Which, normally, if it was _anyone_ else, Lyra would probably take that as a cue to be even more persistent in annoying them. With someone who could actually get inside her head, though...

"Fine, I can take a hint," she snapped, not even trying to hide the spite in her tone. "See you at sunrise, then."

She slipped back into Shadows before anyone could respond, taking the last word with her. Rude, yes, but she _had_ been told to get the fuck out, twice, by two mages more than capable of forcing her to do so, and if she _hadn't_ left, she almost certainly would have done something _incredibly stupid_ — like, provoking Cygnus -level stupid — because anger and resentment and giddy not-fear _always _added up to her doing something stupidly reckless, just to prove she could do _something_.

_Aww, look at you, being all self-aware and responsible. My littlest Bellatrice is growing up._

_Shut up, Eris. I'm not _suicidal_._

She wasn't an idiot, either. The steps she needed to take to eliminate this weakness were obvious, and none of them involved annoying stupidly powerful, millennium-old mind mages even _Angel_ considered dangerous. If she had to wait _nine hours_ to start working on entering the Tournament, she had _plenty_ of time to go see if Anomos had found any more obscure mind magic texts for her. She'd started looking into the discipline trying to figure out the omniglot thing (and specifically how to make it work for her, _without _begging Bella to explain), but learning occlumency had just gotten bumped to the top of her list.

Five and a half hours later, the desperate need to do _something_ had mostly worn off, replaced by extreme frustration. Anomos _had_ found a new text for her, supposedly a treatise on the concept of perfect occlumency, which _could_ be _great_...but it was in Arabic, which meant that in order to get anything potentially useful out of it she had to translate it, or, since she didn't actually speak Arabic (and translating it herself would therefore take _forever_), get someone to translate it for her. (Which didn't mean she hadn't spent the last few hours trying anyway.)

Clearly the thing to do, she decided, was to go poke around the Durmstrang ship and Beauxbatons's carriage. The delegations from the other schools might not like her poking at the enchantments on their transportation — she wasn't planning on _doing_ anything, she was just curious how they worked, but people could be proprietary about shite like that — but most of them would probably be asleep by now. Maïa and Gin were, when she slipped back up to the room to drop off the book. (It wasn't illegal, there was no reason she couldn't keep it at school, and if it was on her desk, she was more likely to remember that she needed to get it translated. Normally not something she was likely to forget, but between all the guests around, and the Tournament starting tomorrow, and _Samhain_...it was probably a good idea to leave it somewhere she'd see it on Tuesday or Wednesday.)

How they could sleep when there was _so much_ going on, Lyra had no idea. Granted, Lyra hadn't been sleeping very well for a while now anyway, just getting five or six hours every other day or so. It didn't really bother her, it wasn't like she was _suffering _from the lack of sleep like Maïa did when _she _had bouts of insomnia — and she assumed that wasn't just her being so sleep-deprived that she wasn't noticing herself getting slow and clumsy, because she was pretty sure Maïa would've said something if she were — she just...wasn't tired. But she was _also_ pretty sure even if she _did_ need as much sleep as normal, not mad people, she wouldn't be able to sleep _tonight_.

Durmstrang's ship was a masterwork of enchanting. It wasn't as complicated as _Hogwarts_, obviously, but its structural and foundation wards alone were at least as complex and layered as the wards she'd written for Zee, or most of the noble houses she'd ever been to. Much to her disappointment, however, its protective wards completely prohibited her even _trying_ to get at its method of travel without breaking them first. And if she was reading them right, that might actually sink the thing, because up close it wasn't so much a _ship_ as the _frame _of a ship. The planks of the hull weren't properly sealed, there were actual visible _gaps_ between some of them, faint light glimmering through both above and below the water line, giving the whole thing an almost spectral glow, so she assumed the water was kept out by the wards. And they were too well-integrated and neatly tied off — any weaknesses _inside_ the wards, not unlike not-Professor Riddle's locket-horcrux — to break in without destroying the whole bloody thing, at least from the outside. She'd have to get on-board to pick them apart, and that wasn't exactly likely to happen.

Or, well, at least not tonight. Paranoid bastards had included an element to warn them if anyone shadow-walked (or apparated) onto the ship, but she could probably convince one of the students to invite her aboard at _some_ point, it would be here all year.

(Delightfully, they seemed to be flying raven banners — did they know Britons considered those war colours? She knew it was just a cultural thing for Danes, like a good luck charm, but still...)

In comparison, Beauxbatons's carriage was almost laughably simple. Levitation and gyroscopic elements, a few standard household wards (against scrying and casual intruders and the like), and a space-expansion worked into the walls, which wasn't exactly basic enchanting, but nothing really special, either. The expanded tents everyone seemed to have at the World Cup were more technically impressive, given that they actually folded up on the outside. She had kind of been hoping there might be some phrases there she could steal for the flying motorbike project — Sirius couldn't find his old notes on his NEWT project ("Well excuse me for having more important things on my mind than carefully archiving my old schoolwork — like an entire bloody _war_!") — and the few things he remembered were... Well, they might _work_, she could definitely come up with something using those elements that would fly, but the flying enchantments on brooms and carpets were _not_ easily adapted to work with iron. She'd be shocked if it was at _all_ efficient, and in this case _inefficient_ meant _slow_ (and therefore not nearly as fun).

But the Beauxbatons carriage wasn't actually enchanted to _fly_ — there were no propulsion elements at all, nothing for steering or accelerating or braking. As far as she could tell, there wasn't even anything to improve the aerodynamics of what was essentially a giant cube with wheels being dragged through the air. (Apparently the abraxans weren't just for show.) There _was_ a hell of an unobtrusivity suite, inactive at the moment (presumably so they could make their big entrance), the sort of thing that would obviously be necessary, flying something like this anywhere near any muggles at all. That she might have to take notes on. But later, because the only really _interesting_ thing about the carriage was that someone had stuck some kind of shadow-magic _something_ to it.

Not only was it something she didn't recognise _at all_, but it was weirdly _light_ — she hadn't known shadow magic could _be_ light. But it definitely was. When she stepped into the Shadows to check it out, it was a weird, glowing..._anti-shadow_, was the only thing she could think to call it. It was also not a point in the Shadows, but a vector, leading off somewhere into the distance. Her best guess was that it was some kind of...tracking charm? Maybe?

Something to help the person who had cast it orient themselves in the Dark, following the carriage, was the only thing that she could think of that remotely made sense. But she couldn't imagine why anyone would _want_ to. The unobtrusivity wards were great, yes, but they wouldn't deflect the attention of anyone who already knew the carriage was there — which the caster _had to_, since they'd anchored the spell to the carriage in the Mundane plane.

And if they could see the carriage, there was no reason they couldn't just follow it by sight. Even if they were trying to avoid being detected, they could just take a broom or something and follow it in the air, it was big enough it would be visible _well_ beyond the range of any detection charm that would be able to identify a single person on a broom. Yes, it might be hard to _keep up_ — most people didn't have top-of-the-line racing brooms on hand, and a dozen abraxans had to be _fast_, even when they were dragging a giant box behind them — but it also wasn't a secret where they'd been heading. Hogwarts's exact location was unplottable, but _Hogsmeade_ wasn't exactly difficult to find, and there was a bloody _road_ between the two. That was _definitely_ common knowledge. Whoever was trying to follow the carriage could _easily_ have just floo'd up and sat around drinking butterbeers until it very obviously flew over the town.

Clearly the whole situation required more investigation.

By which she meant she was going to follow it and see who was on the other end, because she still had a couple of hours to kill before she could start working on the puzzle the judges (and Runes professors) were putting together for her (and everyone else, but they weren't important).

It was hard to tell how far one was travelling in the Shadows, in familiar three-dimensional terms. She was positive she was still on Great Britain, because the Channel made shadow-walking to the Continent impossible. As she'd discovered over the summer, the whole _no shadow-walking across salt water _thing really had very little to do with the salt water, and more to do with the fact that shadows in the ocean weren't really...contiguous, with the ones on land. Or each other. She'd explored a couple on the edge of the Pacific, swimming with Harry and Blaise, and it was kind of like swimming into a really big shadow-pocket. Her best guess was, the water refracted light, which wasn't quite the same as actually casting a shadow. Maybe if she could get down far enough that there was _no _light, that would count, but she suspected if such depths _did_ count, they'd still be cut off from the surface shadows.

There _was_ a tunnel between Britain and France now, but the magical currents in there were completely distorted by the fucking trains shooting through it all the time, the one time she'd tried to use it she'd gotten turned around for _hours_. It was _much_ faster to just stop at Ancient House and use a portal to get to Château Blanc, and she would _definitely_ know if she wandered into it following the tracking spell.

So, she was definitely still on the island.

But the shadow the tracking spell had brought her to was...weird. Thin — though that wasn't entirely unexpected, it was night-time, moonlight threw less contrast than the sun, and they were only a couple of days from the dark of the moon, anyway — and strangely...wibbly. Not unlike the shadows of boats and buoys she'd explored off the coast of California, actually. It _wasn't_ in water, obviously, since she could actually reach it, but... She couldn't really describe _how_ it was weird, it just was.

Also, she thought it might be moving. It was difficult to tell, because it was _barely _deeper than the ambient night, and that was fairly featureless on the Shadow side of the planar border, but _she_ wasn't moving, and it seemed to be moving away from her as she watched it. Made it difficult to make out what was _casting_ the shadow, all she could really tell was that it was alive, and had the same anti-shadow flavour as the spell it had presumably cast.

Well, there wasn't much point to following it this far if she wasn't going to actually see what it was.

She stepped through and promptly yelped in surprise as she found herself falling through the air, out of the shadow of an enormous bird, featureless against the bright crescent of the moon.

The bird seemed almost as surprised, she thought, its wings missing a beat even as Lyra tried to catch herself with a freeform levitation effect or a gravity negation field, by pushing away from the ground — barely within the range of her ability to sense it, but growing quickly closer — or against the air, as though she was treading water or _something_.

It was no good, she realised after only a few seconds. She still didn't know how freeform flight was supposed to work, and the likelihood of her figuring it out before she spattered into the ground was _negligible_.

Closing her eyes and visualising her bedroom at Ancient House as clearly as she could, she pulled herself into apparation space.

When she reappeared with a crack — definitely _not_ concerned about making a graceful re-entry, at the moment — her momentum had been preserved. She crashed into her bed with _another_ almighty crack, bounced off it slightly before finally coming to rest, just lying there trying to catch her breath. It had been knocked out of her with the impact, and the thin, exhilarated giggles she couldn't seem to stop weren't helping.

So, apparently momentum was preserved when apparating. That was...weird. Neat, but weird. She'd have to see if anyone had written anything about it, because she...really hadn't expected that. She'd thought apparation space was a single point, no room for movement...

Also, _ow_.

_Eris, aren't you supposed to warn me if I'm about to do something that might kill me?_

_Yes, I would. But you weren't. Admittedly, this _was _about the worst possible outcome, but you're fine. I'm sure you're not even injured badly enough to keep you from going back._

She didn't actually think she was injured at all. A bit generally sore, maybe, her neck already feeling slightly stiff, but she hadn't broken anything...other than the bedframe. She rolled free of the crater she'd made of the mattress to fix that, even as she admitted, _well, no. What the hell— Was that a _veela_?_

She guessed that explained why the shadow was so thin and poorly-defined. It wasn't anchored on a two-dimensional surface, it just kind of petered out into the night.

_I think so, yes_.

What the hell was a veela doing following the Beauxbatons carriage to Hogwarts? And why was it _flying itself_? Veela _were_ capable of long-distance flights, but there were about a _thousand fucking miles_ between the two schools. She wasn't sure how fast they were, but she'd expect it to take at least a day and a half to send an owl that far. _Maybe_ twenty-four hours, if it didn't take any breaks. Did it miss the carriage? Had it been purposefully left behind? Was it even associated with the school at all? Her first thought was that it was a student, but there _were_ other veela in France. If it _wasn't_ a student, she was even _more_ curious why it was following them.

Of _course_ she was going to try again. She just had to slip back up to Hogwarts and grab her broom, first.

Lyra didn't really enjoy flying just for the sake of it, especially on a broom (she'd much rather go riding than flying), so she hadn't made a point of getting one when she'd first washed up in this universe, but rumour had it one of the Triwizard challenges was going to be a double-elimination quidditch tournament between the three schools, with the Champions acting as captains. So obviously she'd needed a broom. And equally obviously (at least to _her_), getting a quidditch broom, or even a racing broom with better-than-average cornering abilities (which was what most quidditch players used these days) would be bloody stupid, she'd probably never use the fucking thing outside the Tournament.

There was only one aerial sport she really _liked_: stunt flying. Which was exactly what it sounded like — doing stupidly dangerous tricks at fifty-plus miles an hour, a mile and a half above the ground. She'd ended up getting a Peregrine, a relatively high-input model from an Egyptian company, not as fast as the Firebolt or even the last few Nimbus models (except in a death dive, racing brooms had limiters built in so you couldn't hit one-fifty within twenty degrees of straight _down_, because safety regulations, or something), but with _much_ better turning capabilities and more responsive handling. It wasn't like quidditch was about flat _speed_, anyway, as Mullet had demonstrated at the World Cup. The bloody pitch wasn't even long enough for a Firebolt to hit full speed.

Stunt brooms were shorter than racing brooms, normally ridden in a jockey sort of position or lying flat on the handle (because cushioning charms interfered with the enchantments to manage the g-forces involved in making point-turns at fifty to a hundred and fifty miles an hour), and had more complicated semi-fixed leg braces, allowing for more hands-free maneuvers. They also tended to have "fletching" rather than _bristles_, though these days the "feathers" were apparently little fins carved from the same sort of wood as the handle (they had been _actual_ feathers in her old universe).

And they were easier to mount in mid-air, due to a nifty little proximity tether which ensured that if (when) a rider (inevitably) managed to throw themselves free of their broom, it would automatically be summoned to their side. That was pretty much the _only_ safety feature other than the whiplash prevention spells, but Lyra wasn't complaining. If they had to include two safety features, those were the two she would've chosen.

She didn't need it this time — she was already on the broom when she shifted into the shadows, and consequently when she came out of them again — but she still appreciated the fact that it existed. If it didn't, she would've discovered that momentum was preserved in apparation _weeks_ ago, because she'd already thrown herself twice (possibly the most fun she'd ever had on a broom). She also might've been a bit more cautious about sitting side-saddle on it, even though that was pretty much the only halfway-comfortable way to actually _sit up_ on the thing.

She rose slightly, out of the veela's shadow, to hover alongside it, pacing it. It was keeping up a pretty good clip, actually. Kind of hard to tell without landmarks, but she suspected they were going faster than an owl.

It made a chirping, trilling sort of sound at her, which she fancied sounded surprised. She sang back a questioning, _who are you, why are you here_, sort of idea at it. Thunderbird really was the most useful language she'd ever learned.

Its wings missed another beat, as it had the first time she'd appeared, falling out of the air just ahead of it. For a moment it glided, wobbling slightly indecisively before clearly deciding that this was a conversation that was going to require actual _words_, descending abruptly toward a dark patch of ground. That was the nice thing about flying at night, Lyra supposed — it was easy to avoid being spotted by any humans on the ground because they always had light to hand. As they grew closer, the dark patch resolved into a scrubby little copse on the edge of a field. The veela swooped down to within a few feet of the ground, fluttered like a duck about to land on a lake, and shifted abruptly back into her more human form — a wave of wild, hot magic fled from her, like a sudden gust of wind, but it surprisingly didn't hurt at all, tickled more than anything — and dropped unceremoniously to the leaves. After a moment of frowning concentration, she conjured a handful of fire, not to defend herself, apparently, but just for light, since she just stood there _staring_ as Lyra hovered before her.

She was younger than Lyra had expected. Assuming veela aged the same as normal humans — which, judging by the veela who had come with the Beauxbatons delegation, she was pretty sure they did — this one couldn't be older than fourteen or fifteen. She wrapped her free arm around herself, shivering visibly in her loose, sleeveless shift, bright hair glimmering in the firelight as she shook it back over her shoulders.

"Are you real?" she asked in faintly accented French. Apparently remembering she was in Britain, she switched to rather strained English to say, "I mean, you are...a person?"

"A person who speaks French, even," Lyra drawled (in French). "Who are you? Why are you flying to Hogwarts?"

"Who are _you_? Where did you come from?"

Lyra smirked. "I asked you first."

The little veela girl (who was probably actually taller than Lyra, but not the point) glared at her, teeth chattering slightly. Apparently that fire wasn't keeping her very warm. "Gabrielle Delacour. And I promised my father I would not go to Hogwarts with the other students. So I am not going to Hogwarts _with the other students_. I am going alone."

She sounded a little defensive about that, but honestly, that was fucking hilarious. Lyra tried not to laugh too hard pointing out, "You _do_ realise there are easier ways to get to Hogwarts than _flying a thousand fucking miles_?"

"I didn't think it would be _that far_ — Britain's just on the other side of the Channel!"

"Yes, congratulations, you've found it. But Hogwarts is in _Scotland_. _Northern_ Scotland." She cast a few quick divining charms to find their current location. They were _barely_ in Britain, still a few dozen miles south of London. "You're barely halfway there."

The kid groaned, throwing her head back dramatically and pacing in a tiny, frustrated circle. "But it's been _hours_! And you never answered _my_ questions," she added suddenly, as though she'd gotten distracted and just realised that.

"Lyra Black, and I came from Hogwarts. In case you were wondering, shadow walking is _much_ faster than flying."

"I _know_, but I can't shadow walk. My friend Evi can, but she doesn't know I'm going to Hogwarts because she can't keep secrets, and she would tell _everyone_, and then Fleur would find out, and Papa, and then they would make me go home! And anyway, she's not here. And I can't just flame there, I tried, and they're too far away and fuzzy, and I wouldn't even have tried because if I flamed to Fleur I would _also_ be sent home, but I'm _tired_ and _hungry_ and it's _cold_, and this was a terrible idea!"

Lyra giggled. "I don't have any food on me, but...want a warming charm?"

The pouting, shivering veela glared at her for a second before admitting, "_Yes_," adding after a moment, "Can hallucinations cast warming charms?"

"I'm pretty sure I'm real," Lyra said. She cast the charm just a _little_ more strongly than she normally would have — she thought she remembered something about veela normally being warmer-blooded than humans, creatures of fire, and all that.

The girl shuddered, but relaxed into the heat after a moment. "I'm not sure. You are too...quiet, your mind. Empty. There are no feelings at _all_."

_Oh._ Huh. She did recall Bella mentioning something about the dementors calling them _quiet things_, now that the kid mentioned it. Somehow it hadn't occurred to her that she would probably seem really fucking weird to veela, too. "I'm real, I promise. Admittedly kind of fucked in the head, but real."

"That's what an hallucination would say, I think."

"Ah, but can hallucinations cast warming charms?" Lyra shot back, giggling. "I think I met your Fleur earlier? A cousin? Sister? She said she was a Delacour, anyway, and her father is the I.C.W. judge. Why would they send you home?"

Gabrielle, who had perked up briefly when Lyra mentioned that she'd met Fleur, scowled again at the question. "My big sister. And they did not want me to come in the first place. Papa and Mama think I am too young to control myself, and that humans at Hogwarts are racist and terrible and bad things would happen because it's _hard_, sometimes, holding the magic in, but I can do it! And I think Fleur has a really good chance of being picked, and Papa is going to be here all year, and I want to be here with them, especially if Fleur is our Champion! And so I thought I could just _go_, and then when nothing bad happens, they will have to admit that it's fine for me to be there. I just didn't realise how far away it is."

Lyra grinned — mostly because that sounded like exactly the sort of thing _she_ would do, trying to prove she could do a thing by just running off and _doing it_, without any actual plan to speak of. And she would be lying if she said that offering (informal) patronage to a renegade teenage veela, especially one with less-than-perfect control over their conspicuous mind magic, didn't seem like it would be even more provocative to the insufferably non-reactive twats than her muggleborn Slytherin.

Of course, the mention of keeping her magic to herself _did_ raise the question of how the little veela was planning to get whatever mind-magic energy they needed from humans if no one knew she was in Britain — presumably the actual delegation had brought humans who were willing to help their veela classmates with that problem, but just showing up at an orgy wasn't exactly low-key. But Lyra wasn't about to bring it up and possibly make the girl decide that this actually was a bad idea and maybe she should just turn around and go home. They'd figure _something_ out, she was sure. (If all else failed, she was all but certain Blaise would be willing to take one for the team. He was happy enough to feed his ridiculous pocket boggart, and Coco didn't even get him off.) "Impeccable logic."

"Shut up, you're mean." The veela pouted at her as though she _hadn't_ just been complimented.

"I wasn't being sarcastic, I mean it. I'll even help you get to the school, and you can sleep in my bed until your father and sister realise you're there."

It was almost like talking to an elf, how quickly her mood shifted. "Really?!"

"Sure? I don't generally make offers I don't plan to follow through on. Maïa, my muggleborn girlfriend, sometimes has inexplicable issues with people doing things that sane adults don't approve of, so it's within the realm of possibility that she would turn you in, so you should probably try to avoid her for a couple days. But I don't think Gin will care, she tends to be more reasonable about this sort of thing — that's actually one of her best qualities as a minion."

"Er...minion?"

Lyra thought it spoke highly of the veela girl that _that_ was the only bit of that she'd questioned. But then, she _had_ thought it seemed like a good idea to try to _fly to Hogwarts_, _on her own, _because her parents said she couldn't go to Hogwarts _with _people, for what even Lyra would admit was a pretty good reason — she could only _imagine_ how much trouble a teenage veela could get into if she lost control of her magic.

Clearly, they were going to get along _great_.

"Well, not really, I don't have anything for her to _do_. It just annoys her to be called a minion. Come on! We have a house in the City, we can floo up to Hogsmeade and sneak in through the tunnels to get past the wards, and raid the kitchens before we head up to the Tower. I think the elves will be up already, and I still have an hour and a half or so until sunrise."

"Do they not enchant the windows at Hogwarts to protect you from the sun?"

What? Protect from the... "Oh! I'm not a vampire. I mean, I'm not a huge _fan_ of the sun, but it won't kill me."

"But you said you shadow-walked here!"

"I did, but I'm not a vampire. I'm just killing time until they get done with whatever they're doing to make it harder to put my name in the Goblet of Fire. Angel said spying on them was cheating — _disallowed_ cheating. Stupid mind mage said I couldn't come back until sunrise. But, no, the only windows that are enchanted to protect vampires at Hogwarts are in the Defence classroom and Cassie's bedroom. Not that I've actually seen Cassie's bedroom, I just assume it's easier to have sex if you're not wearing head-to-toe protective covering, and I know the Castle puts windows in every sleeping room. Even in Slytherin, it's weird. I still don't know if those are _actual windows_, or just projections, or what, the entire snake pit is six kinds of screwy with space manipulation enchantments. I _tried_ to map it for the new firsties this year, and I couldn't do it. And I mean, I don't admit that I can't do things very often, it just _doesn't work_ in two dimensions, or even _three_..."

That whole project had been one long exercise in frustration. The only explanation for the snake pit was, she'd decided, that it didn't _actually exist_, as a physical object, _and never had_. Which made it infuriatingly difficult to model physically, especially since it shifted about three times as fast as any other area of the school, apparently at random. Eventually, she had just told Rachel the same thing the prefects always told everyone. (Just follow the tunnels marked with an ouroboros and she'd get back to the commons eventually.) She kind of wished Flamel really _was_ Slytherin, just so she could annoy the bitch until she explained what the _fuck_ was going on down there, seriously, it was absurd.

"Never mind. What was I— Oh! Right! Lovegood brought the vampire she's shagging to assist with her classes — she's teaching Defence this year — because she _doesn't do_ dark magic. Stacey's probably the only vampire who's been at Hogwarts in _centuries_. They have even fewer rights than veela here, you know."

Gabrielle just stood there staring for a long moment, silence stretching between them, before asking (saying, Lyra was fairly certain it was rhetorical), "Is this how other people feel meeting me? Because, I know I talk a lot, like _a lot_ a lot, but— Wait! Did you say you're going to put your name in? But you're my age, aren't you? Or, are you? I mean, humans age about the same as veela, and vampires, but you said you're not, so I guess I don't really know what _you_ are, so—"

Lyra smirked at her. "It's not important. I'm fourteen, and yes, I'm going to be the Hogwarts Champion. Assuming I didn't annoy Selwyn so badly she actually convinces Ashe and fake-Slytherin to make it so _I personally_ can't enter. Which, I don't _think_ I did. I mean, Angel wants me to represent the House, and I _left_ when she did her creepy mind mage thing — I _really_ need to figure out how she did that. And also learn occlumency. You don't read Arabic, do you?" The veela shook her head. "Didn't really expect you to, though it would've been convenient if you did."

"But how are you— Fleur said _I_ couldn't enter because everyone has to be seventeen! Not that I think _I'd _be picked over _her_, but—"

"Yes, and? I mean, I just explained this to her, you could go— Actually, wait, no, you can't ask her, I guess. Who else was... Harry! You could ask Harry."

"Who?"

"Er...you know Lise Delacour, the bioalchemist?" Lyra wasn't _exactly_ sure how large most veela clans were, but she'd gotten the impression from Sirius at the World Cup that they were large enough that it was possible she didn't.

The veela nodded enthusiastically. "She's my favourite auntie! I work in her shop sometimes, in the summer, and she's been teaching me, not really a _lot_, just easy basic enchanting, but she said next summer I can start blood alchemy! Well, if I get my Transfiguration marks up, but I _don't_ have Mister Sartini anymore, and, well, he's still at Beauxbatons, so it would be kind of hard to have him now, but he doesn't teach intermediate classes anyway, so I don't think it will be a problem. Once Fleur knows I'm here, I'm sure she'll teach me, she's much more fun and interesting than Mister Sartini!"

"Neat!" Lyra would _love_ to learn blood alchemy. She didn't even like potions and she thought that would be neat. The theory, at least, was _fascinating_, and if she actually did decide to try to make herself a skinchanger someday, she'd definitely need more practical experience. Éanna was more than willing to talk about alchemy _theory_, but she was pretty sure Snape had told him not to actually teach her anything _practical_ about bioalchemy lest she accidentally turn herself into a new type of werewolf or something. (Because Snape _always_ had to ruin her fun.) "Lise Delacour used to be Elizabeth Potter. She was disowned, twice, so they've never met, but Harry is her former brother's son."

"So, Harry..._Potter_? Like in those silly adventure stories for little children?"

Lyra never had gotten around to reading those. She probably should, they were almost certain to be _terrible_, in _so_ many ways. Maybe she'd buy them for Harry for Yule or something, she could read them when he got frustrated with them using his name for something so ridiculous. She nodded. "That's the one. He's also Lise's stepmother's godson's godson. So, I don't know how veela reckon kinship, but I'd call anyone who shares an aunt a cousin, so that's probably close enough. He was there, he can tell you exactly how many fucks I give about people telling me what I am and am not allowed to do. Actually, he's probably the most _normal_ person I know, so he can do that in general. But we should get going, Grimmauld Place is about forty miles north of here, and I _do_ have things to do today."

Gabrielle was tired and reluctant to return to the sky, but given that the options were pretty much fly to Grimmauld or let Lyra apparate them both, and she still didn't _entirely_ believe Lyra was a real person, and certainly didn't trust some (possibly) human girl she'd just met to be dragging her in and out of apparation space, she had done so after only a little moaning. (Lyra really didn't see what the big deal was, Hogwarts was still over four _hundred_ miles away, and she'd been planning to fly _there_, but whatever.)

The sky had just begun to grow light as they stumbled out of Meda's floo. Meda, making breakfast for herself before heading to her office, startled badly enough that she nearly hexed them, but after she realised the unexpected intruder was just Lyra, she'd adjusted annoyingly quickly to the fact that she was being accompanied by a rogue veela. She'd chided Lyra for not finding more weather-appropriate clothes for Gabrielle (as though veela could transform just _any_ clothes when they shifted to their bird form, honestly, Meda!) and gave them half a dozen muffins to tide them over until they managed to infiltrate the school (and more specifically the kitchens). She also made them wait while she found one of Dora's old cloaks for Gabrielle, but since she promised not to tell anyone they'd been there, Lyra _guessed_ that was _fine_. (She had no idea how her little sister had turned into such a _mum_, it was still bloody weird.)

It _did_ mean it was _definitely_ sunrise by the time Lyra finally poked her head into her room. Gin was already up, getting ready for her morning run. "Morning! Is Maïa up yet?"

"Maïa? She's in the loo." Gin was not the most talkative of people before breakfast. Or ever, really.

"Good." She dragged Gabrielle into the room with the picnic basket they'd acquired in the kitchens — that new elf, Winky, had practically thrown an assortment of fruits and leftover-chicken sandwiches at them, lecturing Lyra all the while about interrupting the breakfast preparations. "That's my bed, you can crash there." She always kept the curtains closed, anyway, as a signal for the elves to leave her section of the room alone, so Maïa wasn't likely to notice that it was occupied. "This is Ginevra. Gin, this is Gabrielle—"

"Gabbie," she interjected, with a little wave. "Hello."

"She's definitely not supposed to be here, so don't tell anyone, including Maïa—"

Gin just gave her a completely blank stare. "English, Lyra?"

Er. Right. She'd forgotten Gin didn't speak French. (Really, the Weasleys were the _worst_ not-quite-noble family she could think of off the top of her head. Cedrella had admittedly always been a bit of a lazy bitch, probably didn't care, but Lucy would _not_ approve.) She repeated herself quickly, adding, "I have to go, I have a tournament to enter."

Both Gin and Gabbie looked a bit _confused_ as she grabbed her notebook and skipped back out of the room, but they'd be fine. Gin was already going back to putting on her trainers, and Gabbie _had_ been planning on figuring out _everything_ about sneaking up here by herself — figuring out how not to get caught now she _was _here was really nothing in comparison.

* * *

_This is a great plan, clearly nothing will go wrong, how could it, when Gabbie and Lyra are both such rational, logical people? —Leigha_

_Oh, yes, this will be a certain success, no doubt about that._

_Leigha is particularly proud of her "preemptive research" term. Because both Lyra and Leigha think they're hilarious xD —Lysandra_


	25. Samhain — Best Hallowe'en Ever

Harry _should_ go back inside, he knew he should, he just...didn't want to. He'd been floating around up here, fifty feet or so above the tallest towers, for well over an hour now. The carillon bells had just chimed noon, and he'd told Blaise he would be back for lunch.

It was just, nothing good _ever_ happened on Hallowe'en.

Or rather, every Halloween he'd ever spent in Magical Britain, no matter what _good_ things happened, something _bad_ had happened too. Last year there was Sirius breaking into the school like a fucking crazy person (because he _was_ a fucking crazy person). And before _that_, there had been the basilisk and Mrs. Norris, _and_ Nick's stupid, _awful_ Death Day Party. First year, of course, there had been the troll — he supposed there was a silver lining to that one, at least, because he hadn't been friends with Hermione beforehand. (He very pointedly turned his thoughts away from Ron Weasley, prat extraordinaire, and the role he'd played in that whole mess.)

And thirteen years ago, there was, well..._that night_.

The night his parents had died, and Harry had been doomed to a childhood of Dursleys and misery, all because some _stupid fucking BASTARD_ thought it was a good idea to try to kill someone a prophecy told him to!

(He didn't know what had happened on his _first_ Halloween, when he was three months old, but he was willing to bet it wasn't good, either.)

It wasn't as bad this year as it had been the last couple, what with the Tournament to distract them, but everyone else seemed to think the most important thing was Voldemort being defeated, spent the whole day fucking _congratulating_ him for fucking _surviving_, when _Harry_ hadn't done _anything_! No one seemed to realise that he might _not_ want to go around being all bloody cheerful about that, when the most important thing about the day to _him_ was the anniversary of his parents' deaths. Not that he'd ever really known them to _miss_ them, but celebrating still didn't seem...appropriate, he guessed. And he _definitely_ didn't want to constantly be reminded of the fact that they were dead, either.

And this year, there were about a hundred more people at Hogwarts than there usually were. He hadn't counted them, obviously, but he thought there were about thirty students from each school, and with the Queen and the Tánaiste and their guards and the Ministry people and the extra judges and the extra professors the other schools brought along, it seemed like a reasonable guess. It didn't really seem like it should _feel_ like a lot more people, because Hogwarts was _huge_, but there weren't really that many people around most of the time. He'd kind of gotten used to the school being way too big for the population. And even if there _weren't_ way too many people around, they were all way too excited about the whole _tournament_ thing — absolutely _no one_ was making any effort to contain themselves, and it was just _loud_. And _tense_.

Blaise, weirdly enough, was having a great time. Harry would've expected him to be even more stressed out by all the people and emotions running high than he was, but no. He'd been hanging out in the Entrance Hall with Lyra all morning (the epicenter of the Tournament madness), watching people try to enter their names — apparently the extra judges had come up with some sort of challenge thing before anyone could even volunteer as Champion for their schools. Durmstrang and Beauxbatons had sent all of their students to put their names in before breakfast, and only about five people had managed it by ten o'clock. (Including both Krum and the veela girl he'd talked to at dinner yesterday — apparently she'd decided that she _did_ want to enter, even if her father _was_ a judge.)

Lyra was working with a couple of Durmstrangers and the Weasley Twins to suss out exactly what they'd done, questioning people who'd gone in — it was in an annex, not the Entrance Hall itself — and drawing diagrams and doing arithmancy and shite. Blaise was sitting at the top of the main staircase, crowd-surfing the spectators, more and more of whom had shown up over the course of the morning. Classes had been cancelled due to the expectation that no one would be able to focus on lessons today (which was probably true), and it seemed watching people get repelled from the doorway to the annex or wander back out of the room dazed and confused, was the most entertaining thing since quidditch was invented.

Harry had had more than enough of that shite by midmorning. Lyra had suggested he volunteer to help some of the older Slytherins set up their ritual for the evening — apparently this extra entry-challenge thing had left them somewhat short-handed, since most of the people who _would_ have been out cleaning up some clearing on the edge of the Forest were currently trying to figure out how to enter for a chance to win fame, glory, and a thousand galleons. But Harry still wasn't sure he wanted to participate in the ritual, and he _definitely_ wasn't going to walk up to Thane Rowle or Morgana Yaxley and ask if they wanted his help with whatever mysterious preparations were required.

Lyra seemed to forget that the same people who tended to be big on this sort of traditional shite also tended to hate him because of something he'd had nothing to do with, really, which had happened thirteen years ago _today_. Of course, most of them seemed to hate Malfoy even more, lately, which was vaguely satisfying and _very_ amusing, but didn't mean they hated Harry any less.

So instead he'd decided to go flying. Just to get out of the castle for a bit. Clear his head.

It was a nice, crisp day, the sun hidden behind a thin haze of clouds — perfect flying weather, really, it was a shame there was no quidditch this year. He'd circled the castle and grounds, spent some time trying to figure out what was going on in the middle of the lake — some kind of construction thing, looked like a bloody _island_, he was sure it was to do with the Tournament — and then, since he didn't really have any _purpose_ in mind aside from being in the air, enjoying the light, fall-smelling breeze off the Forest, he'd just let himself _drift_, leaning back into the cushioning charms on his broom and _relaxing_.

It was _nice_, not having to worry about accidentally invading someone's mind or being bombarded by their thoughts and feelings _all the time_, away from the stress of lessons and homework and Lyra's over-enthusiastic excitement about _everything_ and Hermione's tense irritableness with her what seemed like _all the time._ (He wondered, sometimes, why they were dating, since it seemed like they spent most of their days arguing about stupid shite, but then they'd get into long rambling discussions of magical theory and some book they were apparently writing, they'd enthusiastically go on _forever_, and Harry would abruptly realise they're practically the same bloody person.) Away from the confusion and sympathy and guilt inspired by Dumbledore's attempts to show him that Tom Riddle was Evil, and Gin _actually_ reminding him that Tom Riddle was Evil, and the drama of everything to do with the Blacks and Emma Granger, and how Harry going on holiday might've completely ruined Dumbledore's political career.

Away from everyone looking at him like he was anything other than a perfectly average bloke, basically. One who happened to be fairly good at quidditch, and was coming along pretty well at dueling, he thought — but then, compared to _Justin_, _Rachel _was good at dueling, and she was _three years younger_ than them — but certainly didn't give a single solitary shite about politics, and didn't have some secret dark-lord-defeating powers, and spent most of an average day trying not to notice how many of his classmates thought _Severus Snape_ was _definitely fuckable_. (Too many, Harry _genuinely_ didn't get it, and he could read their fucking minds!)

But he _should_ go back.

The fact that he really didn't _want to_ — if he could convince Blaise to come up here and eat on the roof with him, that would be _perfect_ — was the only reason he found himself making one last circuit of the castle. And then, just as he was about to head reluctantly for the lawn, he found a person lying in the trough between two lower peaks of the roof, not far from Gryffindor Tower. He almost didn't see her at all, curled up under a dark cloak, but her silvery-blonde hair had been teased out by the wind, a light ribbon fluttering against the dark slate.

And of course he couldn't _not_ check it out once he'd seen her — she might be hurt, or stuck. Why was she up here in the first place? _How_ was she up here? He didn't see a broom as he hovered in closer — she hadn't _climbed out a window_, had she? Not that he hadn't thought, on more than one occasion, that it would be incredibly easy to go exploring the roofs by doing exactly that, but it was still kind of weird if she actually _had_, especially since the nearest window that would be at all easy to climb out of was three towers away, and he couldn't see any way to get from there to here unless she was, like, a bird animagus or something. Though, in that case, he supposed she wouldn't have needed the window.

She was _asleep_, he realised belatedly, finally reaching an angle where he could see her face. He didn't recognise her, which was odd, because she was about his age, maybe younger. Or, well, she kind of looked like she might be a veela — he'd never really seen that hair colour on a human (though it _was_ close to Luna's), and she had the same heart-shaped, too-perfect-to-be-real face as Fleur — so maybe it wasn't _so_ odd, if she'd just arrived with the Beauxbatons people, but he didn't think that either of the other schools had sent anyone _this_ young. Yes, some of their people were too young to enter as Champions, but everyone he'd seen so far looked like they were at least sixth- or seventh-years, and he was pretty sure the veela were staying in their carriage, not _on the roof_. Also, he just couldn't imagine veela snoring — her mouth was open slightly, drool leaking from the corner, and every time she breathed there was this little whistling noise which was kind of, well, _adorable_, but—

But he was just sitting here staring at her like a creep. Not because she was _very_ pretty and vaguely adorable (well, okay, maybe a _little_ bit because of that), but because he didn't know if he should wake her up.

On the one hand, he still had all kinds of questions about why she was sleeping _on the roof_, but on the other...maybe she'd come up here on purpose? If so, it would..._probably_ be rude to wake her?

But if she _hadn't_ come up here on purpose, or if she had and then her broom had rolled off the roof at some point — obviously not from _here_, safe in the valley between towers, but there were plenty of other places she could've set it down and had it roll away on her — and she was only sleeping because she'd been stuck for a _while_... She might not know that she could call an elf to come help her get down — _Harry_ hadn't known that the elves would come save lost students until Tracey had mentioned it last year — and...

Yes, he should, he decided, probably say something.

"Er... Hello?" The girl didn't respond. "Hello?" he tried again, a bit louder.

Her eyes fluttered open, widening in surprise to see him hovering there. Yeah, he was definitely going to go with veela, he decided. All snoring aside, that orange-gold colour was even less human than silver hair. Granted, he hadn't noticed Fleur having bird-eyes last night, but he _had_ thought there was something vaguely avian about her mind. She could just glamour them like Lyra did, or something.

Before he could say anything, defend his waking her up or explain why he was hovering around indecisively, he was enveloped with that same hot, silky magic he'd felt at the World Cup, and when he'd accidentally gotten in Fleur's personal space last night. But rather than compelling or sexy, this time it felt confused and surprised, maybe a little scared, tingling at the edges of his mind. Not entirely unlike being around most people, he guessed, but..._louder_. And _much_ clearer. Normally Harry wasn't all that good at reading emotions — he _could_ pick up on them, especially from people who thought more in pictures and ideas than _words_, but just whatever emotions went along with their specific thoughts, most of the time. Not with any sort of _nuance_, and he definitely had to think about it, he didn't just kind of...feel what they were feeling. This was more like the way Blaise perceived casual legilimency (eavesdropping on an empath was fucking weird) — the emotions almost overwhelming, without catching specific _thoughts_, as such.

Intrigue and wariness and...self castigation, he thought he might call that one, though he didn't know _why_ she was suddenly so irritated with herself (unless it was because she'd just remembered she'd gotten herself stuck on the roof) and (he felt himself going red) attraction — that was one of the things stopping her jumping up and putting distance between them, an underlying restlessness combining with her surprise to make that her first instinct when startled, that this boy who had woken her up was _kind of cute_. (_That_ was a distinct thought.)

"Hey, it's okay, I just— I wanted to make sure you were alright." Her confusion intensified, even as he gently pushed her magic away from himself.

"Eeh... Pardon me. I do not understand. _Parlez-vous français_?"

Well, _bugger_. "_Un petit peu?_ Um, not really." Her English sounded better than his French, he was sure. Somewhat reluctantly, he dropped his efforts to separate his mind from her magic — that was probably the only way they were really going to be able to communicate. At least, he was pretty sure it would help, being able to tell if he was scaring her or confusing her or making her uncomfortable. "Are you okay?"

That one she understood. _Right. Simple sentences. I can do that._ "I am good. Or...does one say _well_? Pardon me, please, I do not speak English often." And she was kind of embarrassed about that. And...uncertain? Not just about the word, he thought.

"Er... One generally says _I'm fine_. Can I join you?" He formed a mental image of himself sitting beside her, pushing it experimentally into the space between them — not actually _to her_, like inside her mind-space, but more generally projecting it, along with a questioning sort of feeling.

She sat up and nodded, grinning, though her embarrassment spiked as she apparently realised there was a bit of drool dried on her cheek. He didn't even need mind magic to know that, her face went _bright_ red. She scrubbed at it with a corner of the cloak she was still using as a blanket before wrapping it more tightly around her shoulders — the sleeveless blue dress she was wearing under it was so thin it was practically see-through — and patting a spot beside herself.

Okay. That was _something_. (He was probably prouder than he should be about managing to establish that much communication with this random French girl.) He tipped off his broom, and almost immediately slipped on the sharply sloped slate, falling on his arse approximately where he'd meant to sit, though there was no way to pretend he _hadn't_ just been a clumsy oaf. She laughed, a high, bubbling giggle which probably would have been infectious if Harry weren't feeling quite so self-conscious at the moment. "_J' m'appelle Gabbie Delacour. Comment toi?_"

"Harry. Harry Potter. Delacour like Fleur?" He projected an image of the older veela. Her sister? They did look like they could be sisters.

She nodded, delight and love and admiration (with an undertone of anxiety) — for the other girl, presumably — washing over him, along with a flood of French he had _no_ hope of following. After a minute or two, she seemed to realise this, cutting herself off abruptly. "_Oui,_ Fleur is my sister. And you are..._mon cousin_?"

"Er...what?" It took him a second to realise she was saying _cousin_, partly because, as far as he knew, all of his cousins were human (or Lyra). "I don't think so."

Confusion. "The quiet girl, she says — _said_ — your Aunt Lise is also my Aunt Lise, and so—"

"I don't have an Aunt Lise."

Even _more_ confusion. "_Es-tu sûr?_"

"Does that mean am I sure? Uh, yeah, pretty sure. Who told you that? Who is _the quiet girl_?" Because out of all the girls Harry knew, none of them could really be considered _quiet_. Gin, maybe, but he kind of doubted Gin had been going around chatting about Harry with some random veela girl.

"Her name is Lyra? She...might not be..._réelle_."

That startled a laugh from Harry. "She's real. Though, quiet is _not _a word I would use to describe her."

"Not...speaking. Her mind is quiet. Strange."

"_Oh_, yeah, okay, _that_ makes sense. But...she said I have an Aunt Lise? I don't even _know_ anyone named Lise." Maybe one of the Blacks? He was well aware that Lyra (and Sirius) reckoned kinship a bit _oddly_, compared to...pretty much everyone. As far as he could tell, it was almost completely arbitrary, who they considered _family_. He wouldn't be surprised to find out that this _Lise_ was a cousin of his grandmother's godson's sister's husband or something — a distant relation no one in their right mind would consider his aunt. He'd ask her about it later, he certainly wasn't going to try to figure it out across the language barrier here. "How do you know Lyra?"

Not that he was particularly _surprised_ that she knew Lyra, especially if they were somehow related, but the whole _she might not be real_ thing (assuming that was what _réelle_ meant) kind of seemed like she didn't know her very well. Though Harry would admit that he did have moments when he questioned how Lyra's existence was even possible, and he knew her as well as anyone, so...maybe it didn't mean anything. Never mind.

Over the next twenty minutes or so, he managed to figure out that Lyra had brought Gabbie to Hogwarts — she wasn't supposed to be here, that was why she was angry at herself, she'd only been here a few hours and someone (Harry) had already caught her out — and was helping her hide here to prove..._something_ to her father, the ICW judge.

"But, why aren't you supposed to be here?" Maybe just because she was too young? But her father and sister were here, it wasn't like she would've been going a thousand miles from home _alone_. Or, well, she wouldn't have if they'd just brought her with them in the first place. He supposed she _had_ actually just up and travelled a thousand miles by herself (or with Lyra, whatever) and obviously she was fine, but—

She pouted at him. "Papa says British people are _racistes_ — they do not like veela because we are veela, and so it is dangerous." Harry caught a flash of memory, the ICW judge telling her _something_. He couldn't understand the words of course, but the tone was clear — genuinely concerned and sorry, sympathetic even, but entirely unwilling to compromise. "But I do not think it is true. I know only one British person, and you are very nice."

There was no mistaking her tone, not with her magic all around, her feelings pressing in on him — attraction, _desire_ — and it was hard not to reciprocate, feeling her emotions not-quite-secondhand as he was. It really didn't help that she was pretty and clever and had this sort of...bubbly, outgoing, irrepressibly _enthusiastic_ attitude — yes, she might've been embarrassed to be caught sleeping, but clearly neither that nor the fact that they didn't really speak the same language at all were going to stop her befriending him — that was just _incredibly_ attractive (Harry _wished_ he could be that...un-self-conscious, that _confident_, meeting new people), and she obviously had a hard-headed, rebellious streak, since she was _here_, and—

He should kiss her.

Wait— What the hell was he _thinking_?! Bloody _hell_, they'd only just _met_! He was _not_ going to go snogging her out of _nowhere_ no matter _how_ fanciable she was! She'd probably slap him and never speak to him again!

"Er. You know Lyra, too," he said, awkwardly attempting to change the subject.

Gabbie shook her head sharply. "She maybe is real, but she is not a person. People..._feel_. They have..._le psychisme_. Lyra does not. She is..._inquiétante_." Creepy, or unnerving, or something like that, Harry thought, picking up the impression of a shiver trailing down his (Gabbie's) spine.

Which, he couldn't really argue the point. _He_ often found Lyra unnerving, and he didn't instinctively use mind magic to communicate, like he was getting the impression veela did. Not that he thought they actually _spoke _mind-to-mind like he and Blaise could do, but the way Gabbie projected emotions, the way she called Lyra _quiet_, like mental contact was as much a part of normal conversation as facial expressions or body language... If that was how veela talked to each other all the time, he could see how talking to Lyra would be weird and uncomfortable. Kind of like the way he thought talking to Sylvie was weird and uncomfortable.

"Still, I don't understand, why would British people hate you?" Yes, there _were_ racists in Britain, but most of them, he thought, were racist against muggleborns. Malfoy, for example, hated Hermione, but he'd been practically drooling over the veela at the World Cup.

Gabbie pouted at him again, this time something more hesitant about it than before. "I do not know if I can tell you. English is difficult. But I will... How does one say, _essayer_?"

Harry shrugged. Most of the words she'd had to say in French had sounded enough like English he'd been able to puzzle them out, but he didn't recognise that one. Based on the context... "Try? To try? Or maybe _to attempt_, or something like that?"

"_Oui! Comme tenter!_ I will _try_." She paused for a moment to gather her thoughts, uncertain and annoyed — not at Harry, but at the memory of her father telling her she couldn't come here (he caught more of it, that time, starting a bit earlier, her protesting, probably asking why British people would hate her, much as Harry was asking her now) and racists in general — before saying, "Veela magic is not like human magic. Or, not only like human magic. More like you — you are _un voyant_, yes? You...see..._la psyché_?"

Did she mean legilimency? He thought she meant legilimency. That would make sense, there was _obviously_ some kind of mind magic going on between them, so... He nodded. "Mostly thoughts and memories, though, not...feelings. Emotions."

"And you can..._projeter, et former_ — make people do, think, as you do? _Comme, se dit...contraindre?_"

"Do you mean compulsions? ...Yes." He still thought those were _far_ too easy, actually.

She must have realised how uncomfortable he was with the idea, because she burst into speech again, a protesting, trying-to-reassure him sort of babble (of which he understood nothing), underlaid with a tone of _definite_ trepidation. After a few minutes, _clearly_ frustrated with his incomprehension, she managed to force herself to slow down enough to say, "We do not do it...with design! It is only how we are!"

"Wait...what? I don't know what we're talking about anymore." Last _he_ knew, they'd been talking about _him_ compelling people, which...which had made him uncomfortable, she must have thought he was uncomfortable with _her_ for some reason. "Do you mean veela compel people?"

"No! We... _Nous échangeons_..._les sentiments_? _passions_? Is it the same word? It is like talking, understanding! We are doing it _right now_. It is _natural_. But some people, humans, do not have...mastery of the self?"

"Self-control? You mean occlumency? Like..." He pushed back against her magic, putting a bit of mental distance between them.

"_Oui_. That. And humans without occlumency, Papa says they think veela want to...shape? _former, leurs sentiments_. Like _les contraints_, the spell to..._que façonner des idées_? a..._une attaque, ou...une aggression_? I do not know the words."

"Attack," he confirmed. And it sounded like by _compulsion_ (or, the word he'd thought meant compulsion, it sounded vaguely like _constraint_, which was similar) she meant the charm, not just making a passing impression on someone by accident. Which, it was true, Harry could set a lasting compulsion, too (and it was _also_ far too easy, if not quite as easy as the simple compulsions he thought she'd been talking about at first), but that wasn't really the same thing as the way her magic was making him feel an echo of her emotions at all. That was more like, he thought, kind of like an active version of the empathic talent Blaise had, or...like the translation spell that mind mage had done for him at Mira's wedding (which, he should get someone to cast that again, it would make this talking-to-Gabbie thing so much easier), but with feelings instead of knowledge. It took a little getting used to, sure, but it obviously wasn't _malicious_, or something. "They think you're attacking them. But you're not. I mean, _obviously_."

"Yes. But Papa says they do not understand, and they are scared and angry, and hurt veela because they think...wrong...ly? — they think to protect them from us."

Which..._kind of_ made sense, he guessed. _Kind of_. It hadn't really escaped Harry's notice that British mages could over-react to the stupidest things — Parseltongue came to mind. "But, wait. You don't _have to_, er..." How had she phrased it? "...exchange feelings, do you? Fleur didn't, when I talked to her." He was _positive_ she would be feeling his embarrassment over that whole accidentally-invading-her-sister's-mind thing, so he added, "I kind of got...distracted, by her magic, but that wasn't _her_ fault. Normal people — humans who _aren't_ mind mages, I mean — wouldn't have." Granted, it would probably be like him trying to talk to someone without making any expressions, or moving his hands, but obviously it _could_ be done.

"Yes, we do not _have to_, but... It is difficult, keeping the magic _in_. More difficult with some humans than others. The... Ginevra?"

Harry couldn't help but smile, slightly, at the French pronunciation of Gin's name, wondering if she'd hate it more or less than the English version. "She just goes by Gin."

Gabbie nodded. "Gin. Her mind is...like knives, or... How does one say, _comme une hérissonne_?"

She projected an image of... Harry sniggered. "A hedgehog." And now he was _never_ going to be able to look at Gin again without thinking of one, because Gabbie was totally right. "Prickly."

"Yes. It is easy not to touch. But others, like Maïa, the one who is _la copine_ of Lyra? Her mind is more...sparkly. I almost was not able to stop from touching her, which is bad even if she is not _offensée ou_ _effrayée_. I am... Lyra says — _said_ — to not tell Maïa about me, because she will tell Papa. It is why I am here, now. And also because the bed is too...small. Too—" She made a pressing-together sort of hand motion, her discomfort with the idea of enclosed spaces _very_ clear. "—for sleep."

Well, that explained _why_ she was out here, if not _how_, Harry guessed. But he felt it was more important to note, "Yes, Hermione would probably tell your father you're here, because... Won't people be worried about you?" Granted, they probably wouldn't be _political implosion_ -level worried, but he assumed that Gabbie had more family — she had mentioned _Mama_ at one point, and their supposedly-shared Aunt Lise, at least — and if she was hiding from her father they probably also didn't know where she was...

Gabbie knew it, too, he could tell from the guilt she was now projecting. "...Yes. But right now, _Mama_ thinks that I am at Beauxbatons, and I write a note to Alié that I am going home for two, three days, a week maybe, because I miss Fleur now she is in Britain, and sign it _comme Mama_. So, no one worries _now_. And when Alié writes to _Mama_ to ask when I will come back to _l'Académie_, it will be time enough to show _Papa et Mama_ that I _can_ come to Britain, too, and nothing bad happens!"

"Uh-_huh_." Somehow, Harry doubted that plan would go as smoothly as Gabbie expected.

She shoved him, rocking him slightly away from herself. "It will work!"

"But you're hiding on a roof so that nothing bad will happen. That's not really—"

"_No_, I am _tired_. I...flied?" ("Flew.") "—_flew_ from Beauxbatons to Britain last night! It is a very long distance!" Oh, yeah, well. Harry didn't know where Beauxbatons actually was, but he thought Aquitania was somewhere in the _south_ of France, so, yeah, that _was_ a long way. "And I am..._endolorie_, my wings, I do not ever fly so long before."

Wait, _wings?_ Did she mean... Could veela actually _turn into birds_? The veela at the World Cup, when they'd gotten angry, had started to look kind of like what he thought harpies were supposed to be, kind of bird-_like_, but he didn't think they could actually _fly_. Like, with _their own wings_.

Gabbie cocked her head to one side with a quizzical expression, confusion filling the space between them. "You envy that I am _endolorie_?"

"No, I– I don't even know what that means — sore, or tired, or something? But you said _your wings_! Can you— You can fly, without a broom!" _That_ he was _definitely_ envying. It was practically the _coolest thing ever_. If Harry could be a bird, he thought he might never bother being human again.

Gabbie obviously thought this was hilarious. "Yes, of course," she said, when she finally managed to stop laughing at him. "I am not little child."

Harry _almost_ said _show me_, like an overly-excited little child himself, but he stopped because, well, he wasn't a little child, either. (And also, it seemed kind of rude, even if she probably wouldn't take it as such, he couldn't really say _why._) And he was glad he did, because a few seconds later, the bells began ringing again, chiming— "Is it one o'clock already? Shite! I was supposed to meet Blaise, my, um, boyfriend, almost an hour ago!"

"Boyfriend?"

Right, that was probably a different word in French. He let her feel his fondness and affection for Blaise, even as he explained, "We're...dating. Like Maïa and Lyra."

"Dating? Is this a word for sex?"

"Er..." Harry _really_ didn't know how to answer that. Kind of? Not really, but also yes, sometimes? He meant, that _was_ kind of implied, sometimes, but not always, and he didn't necessarily want to talk about his and Blaise's...sex life (weird even to think the phrase) with this girl he'd known less than an hour, _especially_ since she was awfully fanciable herself, and— "It's complicated."

Normally, that was the sort of thing he made Blaise explain...normally being when Lyra (or Sylvie, or Éanna) asked awkward questions Harry didn't really know how to explain, like _why is it weird to not want to see your friends naked_ (and why it was weird to force someone to look at your naked self to prove the point that it _wasn't_ weird). Questions to which the only answer he could give was, _because...it just is!_ (Or _because you're insane_, but Lyra already knew that, it didn't count as an explanation.)

...God, he was a fucking moron.

Gabbie pouted at him, making a questioning little _eh?_ sound.

He _could_ just make Blaise explain! He even spoke French, that made _much_ more sense, and it would be easier, and— "I don't know why it took me this long to think of it, but I could bring Blaise up here. I mean, if you don't want to go down and eat lunch with everyone else..." Though, if she did, they'd definitely have to find some other clothes for her, first. And maybe use a _notice-me-not_ charm so no one would think it was weird that there was suddenly a veela at the Gryffindor table.

She frowned. "It is maybe not a good idea. The students from my school, they will be there also, yes? And I like talking with you." There was a sort of sadness and unwillingness to give something up that went along with that statement, that Harry didn't really understand. "I do not think I can talk with you and _not_ talk to Blaise if he is here," she added delicately. "I do not want to scare him. So..."

_Oh_, she wouldn't be able to use mind magic to talk to Harry without Blaise getting caught up in it, too. That made sense, especially because she didn't know that she had no reason to worry about Blaise having issues with her magic. It hadn't come up that, "He's a better occlumens than I am. That's why we became friends in the first place, actually. He was teaching me."

"Oh!"

"I mean, if you don't want me to bring him up here, or tell him about you, that's fine, I won't, but I really should go, because I said I would meet him—"

"No! I mean, yes, go, and bring him here! I want to meet him!" she demanded, her sadness and fear of making this human boy she'd never met uncomfortable vanishing in an instant, replaced by excitement and eagerness to meet someone new — not that Harry thought she didn't like _him_, just, she was clearly one of those outgoing people who liked having lots of friends around all the time. Kind of like Sirius, he guessed. It had not escaped Harry's notice that his godfather had a tendency to make friends everywhere he went. They'd gone shopping for school supplies, and he'd ended up inviting the bloke from the stationary shop to have lunch with them, because they'd got caught up talking about...Harry didn't even know what, in the five minutes it had taken Harry to choose new quills and notebooks! It was ridiculous!

"Yeah?" he asked, a grin tugging at his lips.

She nodded, clapping delightedly. "Yes! And— Will you _please_ bring food? Now that you speak of lunch, I notice I have hungry." She gave him an adorable (but entirely unnecessary), pathetic little begging pout.

Harry laughed. Apparently he was going to get to have his picnic on the roof after all! "Sure, wait here, I'll be _right_ back. Like, fifteen minutes." He was pretty sure it wouldn't take any time at all to convince Blaise to come meet a runaway veela who was hiding on the roof, especially because Harry _never_ made friends Blaise didn't know. Literally never. He'd probably be pleased with the progress Harry was making toward not being a completely useless neurotic mess (no matter how oddly...embarrassing that thought was, for some reason). The _only_ person he thought he'd met before Blaise was Sylvie — exactly one year ago, he realised, Lyra had dragged him out to meet her instead of going to Hogsmeade.

It might've been a bit...rude, to admit aloud, but he liked Gabbie a _hell_ of a lot more than Sylvie. She was just so..._Gabbie_.

This was, Harry thought, hopping back onto his broom, quickly shaping up to be the _best_ Halloween he'd ever had.


	26. Samhain — Once More Into the Duck

"Okay, I _think_ that should do it," Lyra said, inspecting the last of the tokens she, the Weasley twins, and two not-quite-seventeen-year-old Durmstrangers had spent the better part of the past two hours enchanting to counter the multidimensional maze _someone_ had made of the space inside the annex which now housed the Goblet of Fire.

When no one was in the room, it _looked_ like the Goblet was just _sitting there_, on a two-foot-high basalt plinth perhaps ten meters away, visible from the doorway. It _looked_ like, once one stepped over the age line, it should take all of ten seconds to walk up to it and drop in a slip of paper with one's name on it.

Obviously, it wasn't that simple. The witch from Durmstrang had hit on the idea of transfiguring the walls of the annex to be transparent, and from the outside it was clear anyone trying to approach it was _obviously_ being jumped around, each determined stride moving them off course, leaving them behind the Goblet or occasionally upside-down on the ceiling, but no closer to entering their name.

It wasn't _quite_ an Escher trap — if it were, Lyra was _quite_ certain none of the other students who'd put their names in would've been able to manage it (at least, not as quickly as they had), and based on what they could see there _was_ some order to the way space had been expanded and twisted. It wasn't just _crumpled_, like a collapsed expansion charm, care had obviously been taken to maintain the space in three dimensions relative to the outside world, because people moving around inside didn't seem to be compressed or stretched, but pieces of it had been everted and flipped, which explained the areas where gravity was reversed and other spots where the person apparently disappeared momentarily, slipping into a pocket dimension — probably mirrored, that seemed to be a sort of theme.

According to the various failed candidates who'd been willing to tell them anything (and ranting overheard from those who weren't), there was an illusion or glamour in effect, too, giving the impression that one was trapped inside a hall of mirrors, but one twisted all out of shape by the space warping, folded into impossible, mind-boggling madness, reflections scattered apparently at random, made all the more confusing by the alterations which had been made to the decor.

The judges had removed every object other than the Goblet and its plinth, and charmed or transfigured every interior surface of the room to slightly-glowing whiteness. The light spell worked into it completely eliminated any shadows in the room, and therefore effectively cut off all access to the Dark. (From the other side, it was as though the room _didn't exist_, which was...really fucking weird. And also very neatly stopped Lyra just popping in, without making it blatantly obvious that they were trying to foil shadow-walkers.)

And of course, it made the whole space even more disorienting from the inside, the only actual _reference point_ being the Goblet itself. (The doorway, apparently, was replaced by a mirror, indistinguishable from the others.) She could easily imagine it was impossible, on stepping into a new leaf of the space and finding the centre of the room now behind you, to tell whether you had just been jumped to the opposite side of it, or stepped into a mirror-pocket.

And that was on top of the age line, and a suite of fear- and doubt-inducing curses threaded through the thing. According to a failed candidate from Beauxbatons, these weren't very strong, but the Weasleys were pretty sure that they were a contributing factor in every candidate either managing to enter their name or giving up within fifteen minutes. They were _also_ the main way people were finding their way back _out_ of the damn thing within a few minutes. The mirror illusions vanished when the potential candidate decided to retreat — and returned if you changed your mind — but the space-warping maze was plenty confusing on its own. So someone had oriented the repulsion charms to push candidates back toward the doorway. Not that they had a single point of origin that could be used to navigate toward the Goblet or the opposite wall, or whatever, that would make it too easy.

Which presented a bit of a problem for Lyra.

Not that they would hinder her progress. Even if such things _did_ affect her, she was fairly certain she had enough confidence (_resolve and fortitude_, as one of the Weasleys' new friends had put it) that they wouldn't slow her down any more than the age line. Which was to say, not at all, since that particular enchantment used a standard divination to check the birth-date of anyone who approached it, repelling them if they were not born on or before Samhain of Seventy-Seven. The maze would definitely be a problem, but hardly an insurmountable one — she _highly_ doubted that anyone else had _nearly_ as much experience as herself when it came to navigating (or even just _existing_) in extra-dimensional spaces. If they had managed it, she was certain she could, too.

The defense that would actually _stop_ her from reaching the Goblet without assistance was the most sophisticated, though it was also probably the least obstructive to anyone else (assuming they recognised it).

Lyra was positive that the shifting labyrinth of mirrors those who had gone into the room described was the effect of a Zenobian Box: a class of ancient Palmyrene trap wards which produced multi-sensory illusions in response to the intent of anyone who entered them, generally responding to a desire to reach a certain goal and reacting in such a way as to prevent them doing so.

The usual method to circumvent such things was a fairly standard occlumency trick — making the thing believe one's goal was something _other_ than the thing it was guarding. It wasn't as though Boxes were actually _animate_, and enchanting schema weren't really known for being discerning when people were trying to fool them. But that only worked if one could interact with the Box, which Lyra couldn't. (Bella probably could, but Lyra hadn't magically managed to learn enough occlumency to let a Zenobian Box pick up her intent since the last time she'd been reminded that she was _fucking terrible_ at the subject, sixteen hours ago.)

Likewise, if she went into a Box, she was effectively trapped. Normally the way out of a Box was perfectly clear as soon as the victim tried to retreat — that was actually the detail which had given away what they were dealing with here — but since the enchantments couldn't detect her intentions, they just kept presenting the same endless illusions no matter _what_ she did. Which more or less would put her in the same position as any of the other candidates attempting to retreat (whether they'd managed to submit their names or not), except for the little fact that _they_ could rely on the fear spells to shove them back toward the door. She couldn't.

The less popular, far more complex and difficult way to circumvent such things was to disable the senses affected by the illusion(s) and thereby ignore them, obviously inadvisable since it would then be effectively impossible to work out the extra-dimensional element.

The only other way Lyra was aware of to get around such a thing was to brute force it, maintaining an illusion-negating field around oneself, effectively creating a bubble of normality within the Box. Which took a _lot_ of power, especially dealing with a Box as recently-established as this one — the enchantments hadn't had a chance to fade at all, yet. Not exactly the sort of thing even _she_ could do without a proper team backing her up.

So, obviously, she'd had to put together a team.

In exchange for adding them as exceptions to the age line — it and the Box were, as best she could tell from out here, tied to the plinth on which the Goblet was sitting, so if she could get there she could alter it easily — and placing the pins they needed to drag the interior of the room back into three dimensions and _hold it_ there, the Weasley twins (who apparently thought they stood a chance of being chosen over _her_, silly boys) and the two Durmstrangers, Sabine and Lars, were going to make a 'tunnel' through the Box for her. Of course, none of them (Lyra included) really understood how the space inside the room worked, but Lyra was fairly confident that the Box had been cast _before_ it was pulled out of shape — setting up a Box in non-euclidean space would be _stupidly_ complex, she doubted even Ashe could do the arithmancy for such a thing in less than nine hours, and if they _had_, it wouldn't be twisted out of shape as others had reported — so a tunnel cast through it from the outside _to_ the outside, affecting the Box itself, should (theoretically) affect it as though it were still tied to three simple dimensions, sort of piggy-backing on the Box enchantments to get _inside_, or rather _under_, the space warping effect.

Basically, if all went according to plan, she wouldn't have to touch the Box at all.

"_Are you sure about this?_" Lars asked, giving the room a dubious glance as yet another potential candidate — Cassius Warrington, a seventh-year Slytherin — gave up, slinking away from the doorway looking _very_ ashamed of his failure.

"_My plans always work_," she assured him.

"How are you going to get across the age line, though?" one of the Weasleys asked. His concern was _probably _understandable, that was the one part of the defenses they'd hardly discussed, though it was _also_ the one part that none of _them_ could get past. The Weasleys had even taken an aging potion in an attempt to trick it, which obviously hadn't worked.

"I was born in Nineteen Fifty." She gave him a broad smirk. "Or at least, that's what Magic thinks — there _are_ reasons people don't generally go around using blood alchemy to clone themselves."

"So you're actually admitting..."

"Admitting? What's there to admit? I'm definitely not Bellatrix, so. Are you ready?" she asked, shoving the last handful of pin-tokens into her pocket.

"Yeah, yeah, let's go, Sabine," the other Weasley said, leading the Durmstranger away to find the other side of the wall at the _back_ of the room which had been transformed into an impromptu task. While they waited, Lyra, Lars, and Weasley One started warning people not to interrupt them, waving them off from making their own attempts, and calling them back out of the thing with promises that it would be much easier to put their names in if they'd just give the three of them half an hour to make their own attempt first.

Several spectators, apparently sensing that something was about to happen, ran off to get their friends, returning out of breath some minutes later. Lyra smirked quietly to herself — people (mostly underclassmen) had been trying to figure out what she was up to all day. By the time Weasley Two and Sabine transfigured the _back_ wall into transparency, there was quite a crowd gathered, some of them on the stairs and balcony overlooking the Entrance Hall, but most of them on the ground floor, trying to get a better view of the inside of the Goblet Room.

"No pressure," she murmured to Weasley One.

"Lyra, I'm only going to say this once," he said, far too seriously. (Honestly, it was just a _game_.) "Stuff it. _Prêt_, Lars?" he asked, his twin doing the same on the opposite side of the Box. Both Durmstrangers nodded, and after a quick count-down coordinated by twin telepathy, all four of them began to cast the illusion-negating charm they'd tweaked to create a tunnel, rather than a bubble. It was visible first as a golden line twisting and apparently splintering as it stretched through the room between them — _ha! I knew it!_ — slowly growing to create an arched space within the incredibly annoying enchantment.

As soon as it was tall enough for Lyra to stand up inside it, she stepped through the doorway. Her sense of balance vanished instantly, as her magical and visual perception fell out of sync with each other. She closed her eyes and forced herself to relax as she moved her limbs experimentally, feeling out whether there were any differences between the physics of this space, and the one she'd just left. It seemed not.

She opened her eyes again to take stock of her surroundings. The Goblet _did_ appear to be directly ahead of her, still mirrors hemming her in on all sides, except where her golden path cut through them at odd angles. It hadn't really occurred to her when they'd been working out the plan, but it did very effectively show her the way through the space warping as well. Or, well, it cut her directional options down to two, at any given point. And right now, she could even see the door through which she'd entered.

That made things _much_ easier.

Ignoring the apparent location of the Goblet, she followed the tunnel off to her left. The location of the Goblet _did_ appear to jump around on her a few times, but she just kept going, letting her momentum carry her in the right direction — if she _stopped_ when the room shifted, it would be only too easy to lose track of which way she'd meant to go. Though she _did_ stop dead the first time she felt herself round an eversion, the Goblet bouncing instantly from her nine o'clock to her three o'clock as she stepped into a mirror-version of the world. She was _pretty sure_ that if she continued on in the direction she _had_ been moving, she would end up back at the door, her path folded over on itself.

But only _pretty sure_. She meant, that was definitely her best guess as to what was going on with these eversions. She could tell when she entered one, but that alone was disorienting enough there could easily be some other twist or flip involved, faking her out. If she'd been thinking ahead, she would've thrown a curse at the door or something, just so she could feel which direction it was in, but she hadn't, so...

Fuck it, what was the worst that could happen? She ended up back at the door like an idiot? She could curse the thing and have another go. Her first instinct had been that she should turn around to keep going, so that was what she did, realising quickly that she'd chosen correctly, because rather than tripping back out of the eversion she stepped into a flipped leaf — putting her upside-down in relation to the Goblet.

_Okay, then_.

It seemed that whoever had designed the thing had been fairly consistent, probably because, as the mind mage had said, they _did_ want at least a few students to be able to figure it out. She wound in and out of five more eversions — technically three _re_-versions, and two more eversions, but they felt the same, the difference being akin to turning right or left around a corner — all of them simple mirror-reversals, before (_finally_) reaching the Goblet.

_Finally_ because, despite only being in here for maybe five minutes, being surrounded by so much _glow_ was making her uncomfortable. Not enough that she _needed_ to leave, just...probably about as much as the repulsion and doubt charms affected normal people, actually. She was guessing, but it would make a certain kind of sense if whichever sadist decided to use _this_ method of cutting her off from the Shadows had calibrated it so that she would have an experience somewhat equivalent to everyone else.

She _could_ just drop her name in now, but that would _hardly_ be very impressive (she imagined most people would consider it cheating, to have a bloody path laid out for yourself), and she _had_ promised to fix the room so her co-conspirators could enter as well.

Flattening out the five-dimensional shape the space had been turned into, though, would require her to reach its corners — or what _should_ be the corners — which meant she'd have to leave the "path". So she needed to disable the Box first.

Whoever had set it up had left the enchantment exposed, black ink painted on black stone — practically invisible, physically. The runes did glow _magically_, of course, but even she had had to be within a few feet before she'd been able to make them out. Presumably they'd figured since it only had to last about eighteen hours, there was no point actually _carving_ them. Lyra would have been surprised if they _had_, honestly, something this complex would take _hours_ to carve, especially in fucking _basalt_. They _also_ hadn't _protected_ them in any way, but then, maybe they hadn't expected anyone to actually try to break their puzzle after getting this far and (presumably) entering their name. That would, after all, only make it easier for others to throw their names in as well, increase the competition for the title of Champion.

Lyra didn't really care about that, though. She was pretty fucking sure they could enter the name of every single Hogwarts student and she'd _still_ be picked, because who the hell was going to put on a better show? (She was also probably the most qualified contestant just in terms of technical skill and ability, but the Tournament was about showmanship as much as _anything_ else.) The twins were delusional if they thought they stood a chance, but she wasn't complaining, she wouldn't have been able to pull this off without their help. If they wanted a silly, completely worthless reward, she was more than happy to give it to them.

She sidled around the plinth until she found one of the key phrases and obliterated three of the symbols with a quick _aguamenti_. The rest of them went dark immediately. Simple enough.

Next order of business: finding the fucking wall. The Goblet was (to external appearances) in the centre of the room. With the illusions deactivated, the door was now visible, but given the space-warping, there was no guarantee that just walking away from it would bring her to the back wall. Walking toward _either_ end of the tunnel, though, would get her to _one_ of the walls eventually. She hadn't paid attention to which side she'd come from, and lost track of it, looking at the enchanting, so she picked a direction at random, skipping off mostly for the look of it, though she was genuinely excited to see what everyone thought of this little project when it was done.

As luck would have it, she ended up back at the door a couple minutes later. Now, for the fun part.

"You can drop the tunnel," she called to the four mages on the outside.

As the golden light — more a series of arches and oddly twisted pockets than a tunnel, from this perspective — winked out, she began walking around the circumference of the room, placing pins every meter or so as she went. The leaves of folded space were intercut with each other and therefore had unexpected points and planes of intersection throughout the interior of the room, but they were also still continuous. Walking along with one hand on the wall, it was easy enough to find the corners, even given the random eversions and apparent gravity-reversals, and as she did, make a mental layout of the space. (Which was...very weird, clearly deliberately folded into _some_ particular shape, like a paper aeroplane? but obviously not _actually_ an aeroplane — maybe a stylised bird of some sort.) She imbued each token with a sense of where it _should_ be in three-dimensional space as she placed them, and after about fifteen minutes found herself back where she'd started, on the opposite side of the doorframe.

"Okay, you can activate the pins!"

They weren't quite as coordinated about that as they had been setting up the tunnel. With a stomach-turning _jerk_, the tokens, anchored to the fabric of the space where they were placed but enchanted to orient themselves with respect to each other and the locations she had designated in the three familiar dimensions, dragged the room back into its normal shape, more or less. It took only a few more seconds to throw out a set of "dimensional magnets" — the concept stolen from those neat expanded, self-erecting tents, they just repelled each other when activated, pulling the dimensionally-altered "edge" of a physical space with them until they reached equilibrium with the reality they were fighting. Right, that should hold for an hour or two, and the others should be able to walk straight to the Goblet, now.

Which only left the age line. Where the hell... She could have _sworn_ her detection charms said it was anchored to the plinth, but...

Oh. Oh, _that_ was clever. The plinth _itself_ had been altered, turned completely inside-out. It could probably only be accessed (properly) from the "opposite" side of the everted leaves. Damn it! How had she missed... Never mind, too late, now. She wasn't about to un-do the pins and fuck about with finding her way back here without the tunnel, in a bloody mirrored reality.

A few quick detection charms assured her that there were no nasty surprises waiting for her if she just went ahead and did this the easy way — or, well, the difficult-but-fast way. It would still be less complicated and therefore arguably easier than undoing everything she'd just done, fixing the age line, and then _re-doing everything_. (And it would definitely mean less time faffing about in the awful enchanted _glow_.) It was just one spell, and one that wasn't that complex if you _actually understood_ what you were trying to do. Any OWL Transfiguration student should be able to do it, she thought. Transfiguring objects in more than three dimensions wasn't exactly OWL standard material, but the concept was exactly the same as altering any other physical object, from a technical standpoint. Granted, no one in their right mind would use _transfiguration_ to, say, turn their trousers inside-out, because there were charms for that — or, you know, use your fucking hands — but it could be done, and this was the same, just...in a different direction than usual.

She moved the Goblet, setting it off to one side on the floor, and after ten minutes or so of cursing and trying to find the right orientation (it was a bit like trying to pick a lock with a hairpin, if she was trying to re-evert the plinth from the wrong "angle" it wouldn't work) and pouring _way_ too much magic into the thing — _fucking basalt, pain in my arse_ — managed to get it to collapse through itself, the darkened runes of the Box enchantment replaced by the much simpler scheme defining the age-line. It was _backward_, of course, because she was on the "wrong" side of the mirror, but they _had_ already worked out the arithmancy and the additions they needed. It wasn't terribly difficult to figure out which runes corresponded to which theoretical elements, even when they were reversed.

Completely out of patience for this project (and feeling much more tired than she had when they were actually working out how to do it), she inked the alterations onto the top of the pillar rather than finding a way to add them to the already-set scheme more securely. Painting over the original enchantment would hold it together well enough. It was, admittedly, quick and dirty, but if it collapsed in twenty minutes that was fine. More than enough time for Lars, Sabine, and the twins to put in their names. And it made setting the bits of parchment the others had signed and exposed to their magic (casting a few non-effective charms at them) in their proper place _much_ easier. The runes, old and new, glowed blue as she (re)activated them, the golden line around the edge of the room flashing briefly white.

She set the goblet back on top of the plinth, pinning the scraps of parchment in place, and pulled another one from her pocket, this one inscribed with her own name — and a few choice titles it would amuse her to hear Dumbledore read aloud at dinner tonight.

The blue-white flames of the Goblet rose higher as she dropped it in, licking at her fingers, the magic recognising her, tying her to it, _committed_, if it should choose her. Which of course it should. As Angel had said, if it didn't it was _wrong_.

She turned and gave a mocking bow to her audience — more people than she'd expected, she hadn't been paying them much attention, but she hadn't really thought many people would stick around to watch her place pins or sit there fumbling around with the plinth for the last ten minutes or so. Dumbledore, she noticed, was standing at the edge of the small crowd, looking _very_ disapproving, and probably _not_ because it had taken her several tries to get that transfiguration right.

Also (apparently) not because a bunch of seventeen-year-olds who'd tried and failed to put their names in were in the midst of confronting Sabine and Lars (and also the Weasleys, but it looked like most of the angry upperclassmen were from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons — the Drumstrangers were doing most of the talking because Fred and George were almost as bad at French as Gin). If that was what he was so miffed about, he probably wouldn't have turned on his heel and stalked away, leaving the Runes professor from Durmstrang to deal with the lot of them.

No, Lyra was fairly certain his fury was directed at her, he just knew that no good could come of confronting her over this. He didn't have any say in the Goblet's selection, and it would look _terrible_ if he chewed her out for entering and then had to announce her as his Champion in just a few short hours. She felt her smirk growing even broader at that. Made getting to spend the day on such a fun little puzzle even more worth it.

She skipped back to the doorway (more for the look of it than because she felt like skipping — how long had she been up? she should probably go take a nap...), her most innocent smile firmly in place, fully prepared to pretend she had _no_ idea what any of them were so upset about. That didn't last long, though — she quickly spotted Maïa sneaking around the Weasleys to meet her, looking very much as though she'd like to slap and/or publically snog the hell out of her again. She managed to maintain enough control over herself when Lyra reached her she only said, "You're insufferable, you know," but that didn't do anything to stop the victorious smirk ruining Lyra's perfectly innocent expression.

"You love me." Maïa went _adorably_ red. _Tee hee_.

Before she could see how many more adorably embarrassed things she could make her girlfriend do in public, though — that cute little squeak, for instance — they were interrupted by a furious veela.

"_It is not fair, we had to solve the maze for ourselves! You cheated!_"

Somehow, it hadn't occurred to Lyra that the candidates who'd already managed to enter their names would have a problem with her team's efforts. Especially since none of them were from _Beauxbatons_ — it wasn't like she'd keyed in anyone to challenge _Fleur's_ attempt to become a Champion. Some of her classmates who'd already tried and failed to put their names in might manage it now that the maze was disarmed, she guessed, but she doubted that any of them were more qualified than the candidates who _had_ figured it out for themselves, worrying about _them_ was just stupid. Not, of course, that Lyra _minded_ people being angry at her, it just made the whole thing even more amusing, really, but.

Maïa, on the other hand, _did_ mind people being angry at Lyra, especially when they were objectively _wrong_. "_She didn't _cheat_!_"

"_Contestants must be seventeen years of age to enter!_"

"_That is merely a guideline which all of the schools agreed to, for reasons of legal arse-covering._" Nyberg, a few feet away arguing with some of his own students, snorted trying not to laugh. Maïa pinched her. "_And even if it were an actual rule of the Tournament, _I _wouldn't be cheating. You saw me cross the line. According to the official method of assessing the age of potential contestants, I'm old enough. I'd just be helping _them _cheat._" She smirked, indicating her accomplices with a nod.

"Enough!" Nyberg snapped, cutting off whatever Fleur had been about to say, his words echoing oddly — _words_ because he used an illusion to demand silence in French and English simultaneously. That was just...fucking brilliant, really, why had she never thought of that? It would cut down _massively_ on having to repeat herself for idiots who couldn't be arsed to learn French! "The judges discussed the matter last night, and decided that any student who was able to overcome the protections between themselves and the Goblet to enter their name should be considered qualified to participate, and sufficiently determined that it could not be argued that the organisers of the Tournament did not take adequate precautions to prevent unqualified students entering. You four may enter your names before I reverse—"

"But, sir!" someone on the other side of the crowd — Warrington, she thought — whined. "They _didn't_ get past the protections! They just got that little freak to do it for them!"

"Love you, too, Warbler!" Lyra called at him, over Maïa muttering about how she shouldn't let people call her a freak. Which, complaining about people calling her a freak would be almost as ridiculous as complaining about people calling her insane (which Maïa did all the time). They weren't _wrong_. Well, they weren't wrong for characterising her as such, they _were_ wrong in the implication that those were bad traits to have. But that was just par for the course outside of the House. Outsiders had different standards — namely, placing an inexplicably high value on mediocrity.

Nyberg ignored her, as did her co-conspirators, rushing to enter their names even as the professor smirked at the irate seventeen-year-olds. "And does forming alliances and making agreements not constitute a legitimate strategy for solving problems and overcoming challenges which are impossible for you alone? It is true that you all assumed that you must work individually to enter your names and cooperative efforts were not anticipated, but there were no restrictions placed on the methods by which you might overcome the protections to submit your names for consideration. And I presume all of you who have attempted to enter believe yourselves the best possible candidate to represent your schools. If that is the case and you are confident of it, there is no reason to begrudge your peers their own chance to enter. The selection is not a lottery. The Goblet chooses the most worthy, most able candidate to represent each school."

"_But, Professor Nyberg!_"

"No, Poliakoff! No _but's_! You are all welcome to resume your own attempts to enter after I have returned the protections to their proper state. I estimate this will take about half an hour. In the meanwhile, I _advise you to disperse_."

That _definitely_ wasn't a suggestion, and if Lyra caught it everyone else had to have as well. There were a few more grumbles, but within two minutes the other students had retreated.

"_Lyra!_" one of the twins hissed behind her. She turned to see all four of her accomplices standing just inside the Goblet room. "_How do we get out?_"

"You— _What_? What the hell did you _do_?" Lyra demanded, stealing Nyberg's instantaneous-translation trick. (She might have to sit in on some of his lectures, because if that wasn't fucking _brilliant_, she didn't know what was.)

"_We didn't do anything!_" Sabine protested.

"_Yes, we only put our names in, and now we cannot leave._"

"You..." Nyberg frowned, but his confusion quickly shifted to exasperated disbelief. "You didn't tell them they had to leave their tokens keyed into the scheme."

It wasn't a question, it only took a few seconds to work out that was the only reason they wouldn't be able to get out, that they'd used the same slips of parchment to enter the Tournament instead of writing out new ones, inadvertently locking themselves _inside_ the age line. "Hey, don't give me that look! I thought it was _obvious_!" Actually, she _knew_ it was obvious, she shouldn't have _had_ to say anything.

"You said you were adding us as exceptions!" one of the Weasleys objected.

"I _did_. You _removed_ yourselves from the list of exceptions when you took away your reference tokens and _burned them_ like fucking _morons_."

"We thought it was done!"

"It _was_ done! You—"

"_Could you please pass us some more parchment and a quill?_" Sabine sounded as annoyed with herself as the Weasleys did with Lyra.

"Don't bother." Nyberg sighed, flicking a single quickly-cast rune at the plinth. The age line fizzled out at once. "I was already going to have to re-write it anyway. Vilks, Gould, ten pages on the various methods of adding an individual as an exception to a ward scheme, on my desk by Friday morning, or you're both failing my class. And you two, rest assured I will be speaking to your Graphic Arts instructor as well. Now, _go_."

The Durmstrangers fled, followed closely by the Weasleys, leaving Lyra alone with Nyberg and... Where the hell had Maïa— Oh, she was checking out the Goblet.

"There's... This is weird."

"What's weird?"

"Does this— Does the Goblet of Fire feel kind of..._alive_, to you?"

Lyra shrugged. Of course it did — not _human_, but definitely _alive_. She assumed it was some sort of demonic entity summoned and bound to the cup to judge the worthiness of potential contestants. Probably not originally for the purpose of the Triwizard Tournament, she vaguely recalled reading somewhere that it was first used for the Tournament by Durmstrang, and that Beauxbatons won the right for all of the schools to use it to choose their Champions at some point in the Fourteenth Century. (The Tournament used to have stakes declared between the Heads of the Schools, and Durmstrang had been foolishly overconfident that their magically-chosen Champion would prevail over the best the others had to offer.) But it was clearly _much_ older than that. "Of course it's alive. How else would it choose the Champions? I mean, that takes a degree of consciousness that enchanted constructs just don't have."

"What about the Sorting Hat?"

..."Okay, that _most_ enchanted constructs don't have. And the Hat feels alive, too."

Not to mention, they didn't really _know_ how the Hat had been made. It was generally _considered_ an enchanted construct, in the sense that it grew out of spells that had been anchored to sustain themselves, but Lyra's (Bella's) first impression of it had been that it was more like House Magic, an effect of magical accretion — albeit one which had somehow been accomplished in a very short period of time, rather than over the course of several centuries. She suspected there had to be ritual involved, possibly human sacrifice. That _was_ the easiest way to imbue an inanimate object with sentience, or even sapience.

Though if it _were_, she thought it would need to be 'fed' periodically? The House of Black hadn't _just_ sacrificed muggles at Yule because it felt really fucking good (though it did), it had been an integral part of maintaining the Family Magic — she'd managed to figure out _that_ much, at least, from the Grimoires. In the absence of proper sacrifices, she suspected it had started cannibalising the remaining members of the House, probably part of the reason Walburga had apparently lost her fucking mind and died at the age of, what, sixty-five? Of course, that was _mostly_ because they'd made such extensive use of blood wards, which were dependent on the Family Magic rather than tied into ambient magical currents like place wards. Lyra hadn't actually put it together until after she'd gone to check out the ward Dumbledore had placed on Harry and the Dursley family.

As long as there were enough mages in the family to support them, blood wards — even dozens of them, distinct and under-optimised — were _fine_, but _enough_ was about thirty reasonably powerful mages (like Sirius or Harry or Gin) or probably forty-five or more average mages (like Zee or Cissy or Ted Tonks). Even by the time Bella was born, they'd probably been getting toward the critical point of not having enough mages to sustain them without the sacrifices, and then Bella started killing them, so as soon as they stopped making annual sacrifices the Family Magic (what was left of it) would've started "starving". One of the things she'd done over the summer, while she was re-binding the elves, was cut out all of the blood wards to stop them bleeding out the now-disunified remains of the House Magic completely.

But she was pretty sure no one was sacrificing people to the Hat. Maybe it fed off mental energy while it was Sorting kids, or was tapped into the school wards or something? Anyway, not really important. What were they even talking about, again?

"...used in a ritual to choose a champion to represent the tribe or clan," Nyberg was saying. Ah, right, the Goblet of Fire.

"And their god answered...through the Goblet?" Maïa said, sounding doubtful.

The professor nodded. "Indeed. Tokens are submitted which represent each potential champion, and it chooses the one it believes best suited to the task, giving their token back. And though the people and their god are all but forgotten, now, the consciousness which was once the face of magic to them lives on in this relic, given new purpose some...six and a half centuries ago, I believe. The Headmasters of the time convinced it to choose their champions simultaneously, when before it had only chosen from one group at a time — a hero to represent the holder of the Goblet against whatever foe they faced."

"Oh! That is _fascinating_! Where did you— Is there a book I could look for on the subject?"

Nyberg gave her an odd, questioning sort of look. "There are many books on the history of the Tournament, yes, most of which include something on the Goblet of Fire, though they are mostly concerned with the choices it makes and the geas which binds the contestants to participate. Less so the creation of the Goblet itself and the people who gave it life. But we _do_ have a primary source available..."

Maïa's eyes grew _very_ wide. "You mean...it talks? Like, _the Lord spoke out of the fire_?" Sounded like she was quoting something, though Lyra wasn't familiar with it.

"Not quite," Nyberg said, chuckling. "More like, you touch the flame and it communicates with impressions and magic, like any other Aspect of Magic. It can only be awakened every three years, and then only for a day before it makes its choice and falls back into dormancy," he added, "but while it burns, those who touch the flame can speak to it. Ask questions."

"Lyra!" she exclaimed, nearly bouncing with excitement, "Did you talk to it? Did it show you anything?"

"Er, no." Eris was hardly likely to let some random fire-god that far into her mind. And Lyra was _pretty sure_ Maïa knew that. It had to have come up...at some point. Hadn't it? Maybe it hadn't. "I felt the binding magic when I put my name in, but nothing else."

The professor nodded, giving her a tiny smirk. "I imagine gods tend to be possessive of their favourites, yes?"

"What?" Lyra said reflexively, resisting the urge to freeze in surprise, give herself time to assess exactly what the fuck was going on here.

"Apologies, I must have misinterpreted Angelos, when she insisted that you're her sister."

Oh. Right. It hadn't occurred to Lyra that that might be a bit of a dead giveaway about the whole _black mage_ thing, especially to anyone who knew that Angel was an Avatar of the Dark. Fuck. "You must have, yes. Because being a black mage might not be Unforgivable at the moment—" ICW law was _slightly_ more reasonable than Britain's. "—but I'm still going to be here after the Tournament ends."

"You may want to remind your sister of that fact," he suggested, eyes dancing.

She might, yes. Though there was really no telling whether that would help. If their positions were reversed, Lyra knew _she_ would think it hilarious to tease Angel by making her life just a _little_ more complicated...

"Oh... Oh, that's _strange_," Maïa muttered, a hand extended to the very edge of the Goblet, a few tiny blue flames licking at her fingers. She pulled them away relatively quickly, shivering and pressing her hands to her temples.

Lyra snorted. If Maïa was going to keep poking around with ritual magic — which, given her reaction to that little introduction ritual she and Gin had conducted, she thought she probably would — they might need to have a talk about how to talk to magical entities. Or rather, how to _listen_ to them without being completely overwhelmed. Magic highs were fun. _Someone doesn't talk to humans very often_ migraines, not so much. "Are you okay?"

"I think I asked too big a question," she moaned, eyes screwed shut. "That was just...just a _lot_."

Lyra wasn't sure what exactly she'd asked, but she was willing to bet it was something like _what are you_. "Yeah, heads up, sometimes when you ask gods what they are, they actually try to answer. Human minds can't really comprehend that sort of thing."

Maïa managed to open her eyes enough to glare at her. "I didn't ask what it was, I asked where it came from." Same difference, really... "And you couldn't've mentioned that, I don't know, _before_ I touched the fire?"

"I didn't realise you were going to just go _trying_ it!"

Nyberg patted Maïa's shoulder. "Go sleep it off Miss...?"

"Granger," Lyra supplied, though she refrained from adding _my muggleborn girlfriend_, because Maïa was already annoyed enough with her. "Come on, Maïa," she said, taking her arm to turn her toward the door. "He's right. And I was going to take a nap before the feast anyway. Professor Nyberg."

He nodded in farewell, flicking his fingers toward the door. "Yes, go away so I can fix the mess you've made of Angel's lovely origami. I believe it was supposed to be a duck."

* * *

_That quote Lyra didn't recognise is from the Bible. Because Lyra's well read like that._

_I spent like, four hours trying to figure out how to describe a five-dimensional maze. The basic premise is, you take a three dimensional space and treat it like a flat piece of paper, fold it into a different shape, like, say, a swan, then take a few of the planes (areas) now defined by the folds, and turn them "inside-out" in a dimension completely different from any of the ones involved in the original room, or the one in which that room is now a duck (because Angel is bad at origami, it's such a patient, fiddly art...). I think of this direction as 'through', basically the same thing Lyra's doing with the plinth, flipping shite around. As you try to walk in a straight line through the original three dimensions, the way that the room's been twisted and folded means you actually end up moving in a very different direction than you intend with every step. You can, however, find an edge of the original space, and follow it around what would be the edge of the paper in an actual origami bird, which is what Lyra did to "unfold" it. Does this make sense? I don't know. It's one of those weird experimental chapters like writing a scene from Eris's POV. Extradimensional origami is **hard**. —Leigha_


	27. Samhain — Amazing Smart-Person Ideas

"So you're going to just...walk in, sit at the Gryffindor table, and hope nobody notices?"

Gabbie pouted — when Blaise put it like _that_, it sounded completely ridiculous.

Her amazing brilliant smart-person idea of flying up to Hogwarts by herself was, perhaps, not quite so straight-forward as she'd thought. It hadn't been her _original_ plan, of course, she'd _wanted_ to go up with everyone else — in that carriage thing where she wouldn't have to fly, and there'd be food, and it'd be _warm_ — but Papa had backed her into a corner.

Gabbie _never_ lied to her family..._but_, she was perhaps inappropriately proud to admit, that didn't mean she never did things they didn't want her to do, even when she made it _seem_ like she'd promised she wouldn't. Papa had told her she couldn't go to Britain, and tried to make her promise she wouldn't, so Gabbie had, _carefully_, promised she wouldn't go to Hogwarts, _with the others_. She, _very carefully_, _hadn't_ said she wouldn't go to Hogwarts at all.

Honestly, she'd been a little surprised Papa hadn't caught it. She pulled that kind of trick all the time...

It had seemed the easiest thing in the world, just, tag the carriage, fly up after it, then hang around the school for a few days to prove she was _fine_, she wasn't going to get herself hurt or whatever staying in Britain for _a few months_, hopefully make an argument that would be convincing enough for Papa to let her stay. It honestly hadn't occurred to her just how _long_ the flight would be — Britain was _right there_, okay, it hadn't seemed that far, maps were _stupid_. The flight had been _long_, and _cold_, and _hard_...

When Lyra had appeared out of nowhere, Gabbie had honestly thought she'd exhausted herself so badly she was hallucinating. She had been rather light-headed by then, and everything had been fuzzy and floaty and _terrible_. She hadn't actually been certain Lyra was real until that warming charm, and even then she'd wondered — she was just so _quiet_, magic without any feeling behind it, it was _creepy_...even more than Bellatrix, but Gabbie wasn't supposed to let anyone know she'd stayed with them for a couple weeks over the summer, so she hadn't asked if they were, like, the same sort of weird and creepy, if they were related or something. (They probably were, they looked very similar too.)

But she'd made it! Like, it'd been _awful_, and if Lyra hadn't shown up to help her skip most of the second half of her flight she might not have, but she _had_, she'd gotten to Hogwarts by herself! Well, no, not by herself, but still!

And Papa was _so_ full of shite, all the British people she'd met so far were perfectly nice! True, that was only five people...er, four — she hadn't actually spoken to Lyra's Maïa, just felt her moving around in the room on the other side of the curtains. (Still half-delirious from exhaustion, and finally having _food_ and being all _warm_, she'd been so sleepy, she'd barely resisted the urge to reach out to Maïa's mind. She was just so pretty! All swirly and cool and sparkly, she couldn't help it...) Lyra was quiet and creepy, sure, but she'd helped her when she really hadn't needed to, and was quick and funny, and also a perfectly reasonable and rational person if she did say so herself — she'd understood Gabbie's plan to sneak to Hogwarts on her own and force Papa to let her stay instantly, and hadn't tried to "reason" with her for a second — and Gin had been...not _friendly_, exactly, but she hadn't been _mean_ either. (She was slightly scary, her magic all hot and vicious, her eyes all sharp, but Gabbie was _related_ to scarier people, she didn't care.) And then there was Harry and Blaise, they were super nice!

This trip hadn't gone _quite_ so smoothly as she'd expected, but it was going well enough to be getting on with, if she did say so herself.

Even if she did still hurt. Sort of a lot. She'd never flown that long before, okay, she hadn't realised how _hard_ it would be. There was still a dull, tense, throbbing ache all through her arms, her back and neck and shoulders, she felt all stiff and awful and bluh. She'd nearly tried to wheedle Harry into a massage, before reminding herself at the last second she didn't want to seduce him — _yet_, she didn't doubt she would eventually. (She'd been told several times that outsiders found it odd when you came onto them too hard too soon, sometimes it was difficult to remember these things.) And she was still tired, even after her _two_ naps.

The first time she'd fallen asleep didn't count. That had been back in Lyra's (and Maïa's and Gin's) room, and she'd maybe only been..._half_-asleep for a few minutes before deciding this just wasn't going to work. She meant, the room itself was rather smaller and closed in than she liked, but those _curtains_, she had to leave those closed so no one would come up and find her where she wasn't supposed to be, and those were _awful_, before long she'd started getting all tingly and nervous, there was no way she'd be able to sleep properly. So she'd snuck out, with the cloak she'd borrowed from Lyra's Meda, found a window, gripped the cloak in her teeth, then flung herself out into the air.

She'd nearly plummeted straight to the ground (well, the roof several floors below her) like a fucking idiot. The fires of the change had swept over her as smoothly as ever, of course, but she was so _stiff_ and _tired_, she'd nearly crashed before she'd gotten her wings under her properly. (She wouldn't have _died_, the People were quite impact-resistant, but it would have hurt like hell, certainly.) She'd swept over the castle, before long finding a little valley between two angled roofs, where she could nestle without rolling off an edge anywhere — after all, she wasn't an _idiot_. Once she was human-shaped again, she'd wrapped the cloak around herself — it _was_ kind of cold up here — and settled in for a _proper_ nap.

And was woken up by a British boy after a few hours, because of course she was. But that was fine, he was very nice! His mind had the legilimens thing, all shifting and curling and playful, like a kitten weaving between her legs — though, it also had a fascinating ambivalence to it, cold and hot, smooth and spiky, it tickled — but _unlike_ any human mind mage she'd ever met he'd quickly started intentionally projecting feelings and thoughts at her, even..._mostly_ recogniseable images (it was kind of weird and fuzzy, but she mostly got them), which was just—

That was just brilliant! Why didn't people do that all the time?! Even the People didn't do the thing with the images and stuff! Gabbie hadn't even realised they _could_, not until she'd tried doing it back at Harry — it _did_ work, but she thought hers were even fuzzier than Harry's, there was always a moment of confusion before it clicked. She didn't know why people didn't just do that all the time, it was _very_ convenient.

Especially in this case, Harry's French was practically nonexistent, and English was _stupid_.

It'd been a bit embarrassing at first, some unknown British boy floating right up to her in her sleep — especially since he was _very_ cute, with the messy hair and the bright green eyes, all tiny and snarky, his magic quick and tingly, and when he'd found her Gabbie had been _drooling_ — but it was fine, he was nice. He'd found her sleeping, he _could_ have hurt her easily if he'd wanted to, and he clearly didn't mind her weird mind magic stuff. Papa was just a paranoid old person, it was fine.

And Lyra had said Harry was the most normal person she knew, and she probably knew _lots_ of people, so it was _fine_ for Gabbie to be here, _obviously_.

Though she was still sort of confused. See, she'd known Auntie Lise used to be British. She'd been married to Aunt Chloé for longer than Gabbie had been alive, so she didn't really know all that much about it. All Gabbie knew was that she'd gotten into a huge argument with her father over her refusal to consent to an arranged marriage (or even play along with the courtship game, apparently), and that her British family's colours were red and white — that scarf Auntie Lise wore, Aunt Chloé had made it for her ages ago, before they'd married even, she'd made it red and white for that reason. That her family _had_ colours suggested she was from one of the British noble families, but she _was_ a pureblood (in the silly sense the mages used, she meant, though she was a hundred per cent human too), so. Honestly, Gabbie hadn't even known what her name had been before she'd become Lise Delacour, she'd never asked, it'd never seemed particularly important.

But Lyra had seemed _very_ confident Auntie Lise had been Elizabeth Potter. Gabbie hadn't really believed her at first, but...well, she clearly _did_ know who Auntie Lise was, and she claimed to even be related to her (by marriage), so she probably knew what she was talking about.

But _Harry_ didn't know anything about her, which was...weird. Especially since Gabbie was only _more_ certain Auntie Lise and Liz Potter were the same person after meeting Harry — they had the same hair, thick and dark and stubbornly disobedient. (They even wore it at a similar length, Auntie Lise kept it short because it somehow resisted grooming and styling charms, and using potions on it all the time was just tedious.) Even if she hadn't been told they were related, she might have guessed on her own. She had the very clear impression Harry thought Lyra was just being silly, that Auntie Lise was, like, the third cousin of a godparent...by marriage...or something.

Gabbie was _pretty sure_ the father Auntie Lise had the big argument with had been Harry's grandfather. (Or great-grandfather, maybe?) It was very weird...but also not really her business, trying to pick apart Potter family drama that had happened a generation ago, so she'd decided to just ignore it.

(Or _try_ to ignore it, anyway, it was _very_ weird.)

But anyway, Harry was very nice, making sure she was okay and then going to get food for her. Though it _had_ taken longer than Gabbie had thought, she'd wondered if something had gone wrong. And something _had_ gone wrong, when Harry had returned with food (and Blaise) the smell of blood had been lingering over him, faint but unmistakable, a few speckles of it on his collar. He'd brushed it off, saying he was fine, some boy named Malfoy was just a jerk, so...

And Harry's Blaise, British person number four she'd met, was also perfectly nice. Though, his magic and stuff wasn't nearly as _odd_, nothing like the neat warm-cold ambivalence Harry had. She thought he was probably shadow-kin — or part-demon maybe? — the peculiar stillness to his mind and the orange in his eyes was a giveaway, but he mostly felt like any other legilimens, the texture of it reminding her very much of Arte (though not as prickly). Probably less experienced than Harry, he'd picked up the projection Harry was doing, but he was _far_ clumsier at it...sort of? The images were clearer, when he got them out, but it was... He wasn't nearly as smooth at it as Harry, she couldn't say how, exactly, just seemed to take a little more effort for him. But he was perfectly nice too, so.

_Way_ more flirty than Harry, though, he kept making Harry go all flushed and stuttery. It was adorable.

(There's an idea, she should seduce _both_ of them. Splitting herself between two people made it less likely she'd accidentally hurt either of them, and mind mages would be better able to stop Gabbie from pulling too hard, so that was just perfect! Not right now, though, normal humans didn't like it when you did it too soon, she didn't want to come off all creepy or something...)

There had also been food, but Gabbie had liked that rather less than Harry's silly flirty boyfriend. In his little basket had mostly been ham sandwiches, which, blech, _ham_ — it was all salty and gamey and _gross_, she'd had to pick it off. Which had left her mostly with bread and butter and cheese, which was fine — a little bland, but she'd been too hungry to be picky — and Harry had been all guilty for not asking first and accidentally getting something she didn't like. Blaise did a much better job than Gabbie at getting Harry out of his funk, all teasing him like, should have said they were getting food for a veela, silly boy, and Harry had been too annoyed to be properly guilty anymore, neat trick.

Gabbie had passed out again shortly after eating. She was still _tired_, okay, flying long distances was _hard_. She'd woken up when it started getting _really_ cold, the sun disappearing behind the hills. At some point, her head had ended up in Harry's lap, using him as a pillow — she hadn't started there, but she wasn't surprised, she had a tendency to migrate in her sleep. (She'd wedged herself between two slopes for a reason.) And Britain was _cold_, and Harry was warm, and his magic was tingly, so, yeah, that's exactly what she would have expected to happen. He was being all silly and awkward about it, though. She'd literally bitten her lip to keep herself from saying anything, whatever she said would have come out all flirty, which would have just made Harry _more_ awkward.

But now she was awake, and it was starting to get too cold to sit outside anymore, and she was _hungry_ again! And Blaise didn't think she should go to the dinner feast thing. Boo.

With a bit of a drawl to his voice, Harry said, "I get the feeling people will notice if we just stick you in Ravenclaw robes and pretend you're supposed to be there."

She wasn't certain if that was supposed to be a compliment or not — it kind of sounded like one, that people couldn't _not_ notice her, but it wasn't really said like it. "But they don't know I'm not _supposed_ to be there! They just think I'm one more guest, no problem."

Blaise pushed back the shiver of amusement (from the Ravenclaw robes comment, she thought, though Gabbie didn't get it), before talking. "No offence, Gabbie, but you're leaking magic all over the place. People _are_ going to notice you there."

"Yeah, but I'm not the only veela in the room." She was still slightly confused by the words they used for the People in English, not sure where they came from, but that was fine, they were easy enough to pronounce and remember. "It is... Veela magic in the air everywhere, they can't feel it coming _from me_." She thought she was making sense? English was _stupid_.

Both of the boys were slightly stumped by that one, throwing each other uncertain glances — if she had to guess, they hadn't realised normal people wouldn't be able to tell _which direction_ the magic was coming from, that it'd all be the same to them, so she shouldn't attract any particular attention. (Unless she _tried_ to make them notice her, but she was trying to be all sneaky, so she wouldn't. If anything, she'd be _trying_ to make herself seem unremarkable.) Which, in her experience, humans tended to be very bad at pinpointing the source of this sort of thing. Put several people projecting stuff in a room, most people couldn't tell who was doing what, it was just an...undifferentiated soup all around them, one direction was the same as any other.

Mind mages (and empaths) were the major exception, so, she wasn't surprised that hadn't occurred to them. They probably thought the idea that someone _wouldn't_ be able to tell was weird.

"Okay, forget about that, then." Blaise didn't sound like he believed her, but he was moving on anyway. "Even if they won't be able to tell you in particular are projecting anything, you still _look_ like a veela. If you sit at any of the student tables with us, people are going to wonder who the veela is and why she's sitting with us, which is going to ultimately draw attention from the Beauxbatons people. If you go to dinner with everyone else, you are going to get caught."

"Glamours, maybe? It's really the hair and the eyes that look really...veela-ish, that might help." At least Harry was trying to be helpful, because he was nice like that.

Even if his idea wasn't actually helpful. "Our magic pushes off things of that kind. Even if it sits correct, it doesn't stay." There were potions Gabbie could use to change her hair colour temporarily (or just the dye muggles used), and coloured contacts would work for the eyes, but they didn't have the time to get their hands on any of that.

Harry seemed to think that was very weird, but he clearly decided to take her word for it. (Blaise didn't even try to hide the doubt he was feeling, but he also didn't say anything about it, so he was _also_ taking her word for it, just more like, _okay, if you say so, silly person_.) "Maybe just an unobtrusive charm?" Gabbie wasn't certain what that even was, stupid English...

Blaise shook his head. "If she keeps leaking magic everywhere, an unobtrusive charm will break almost instantly. Even if people don't _consciously_ notice anything, projecting like this will still _subconsciously_ attract their attention, which _will_ cause the charm to fail."

"Shite, Blaise, do _you_ have any ideas, then?"

"Sneak her into the kitchens?"

"That's not a solution, that's avoiding the problem entirely. Sure, the elves would feed her, but she'd miss the feast and the selection of the Champions, which is sort of the whole point."

Gabbie tried to hold in a smug grin — Papa was full of shite, see, British people were perfectly nice, it was _fine_.

Blaise let out a long sigh, eyes tipping up toward the darkening sky. He was acting all put-upon and irritated, but it wasn't convincing at all, Gabbie could feel the amusement and reluctant warmth in his head. Harry must feel it too, he wasn't even trying to hide it that hard, he was just being silly. (Not that she minded, she liked silly.) "We could talk to Daph and Astoria, get them to pretend Gabbie is a distant relative from the Greenwood — there are a lot of very odd people there, they _could_ pass off Gabbie's more unusual traits as something someone did to themselves with blood alchemy generations ago." Technically, that was even true... "Claim her name is Fabianna Snow-Holly or some shite, I bet Tori would think the whole thing hilarious, but Daph would take convincing.

"Or, we could just find Lyra and see if she has any ideas."

In the end, it was decided they would find the quiet girl, and see if she had any ideas. While the boys squeezed together on Harry's broom — Harry got a little _distracted_, Blaise sliding up that close to him, Gabbie failed to hold in a giggle — she whipped off her borrowed cloak. Which meant she was fucking _cold_, standing out in the open in the _stupid_ British autumn, not wasting a second she gripped the cloak by the hood between her teeth and called her magic up, let the flames wash over her.

_Ah, much better_...

Harry's head had gone all hot and jittery with surprise and...concern? Oh, to someone who'd never seen it before, it might have looked like she'd just set herself on fire, right. Anyway, now he was just staring at her, wide-eyed and quiet (while Blaise looked on in amusement). It was kind of funny.

She couldn't even twitter mockingly at him right now, with the cloak stuck in her mouth, so she just rolled her eyes, hopped over to the edge of the roof and threw herself into the air.

Harry got over his weird quiet awe very quickly, zipped up ahead of her in a blink — she _hated_ flying on brooms, but she could admit they were faster. Harry led her on a gentle, leisurely glide down to the ground, not to the front door but over to the side somewhere, behind a row of greenhouses, shielded from the main entrance by the buildings and a row of bushes. The boys landed near a smaller, less fancy-looking entrance — rather awkwardly, Blaise nearly fell over, tripping over the broom — so Gabbie tipped down to the ground a couple metres away. With one hard back-flap to kill most of her momentum, trying to ignore the burning ache in her shoulders and her wrists (she really needed to rest for a couple days, _everything_ hurt), the flames passed over her in a wave, her feet, human-shaped again, skipping down to the ground. She flung the cloak back around herself immediately, hugging it tight around her — without the magic and the feathers it was bloody _cold_ out here...

She'd barely been on the ground for a couple seconds, before Harry — his tingly magic sparking with excitement, a low-smoldering envy in the background — said, "Seriously, that's _so damn cool!"_

Gabbie smiled.

While Blaise flounced off to go find Lyra — she wasn't sure how he intended to find her, the castle was bloody _huge_, but he must know what he was doing — she and Harry were left in a little sitting room sort of thing, with chairs and couches in yellows and blacks and blues, a fire cheerily crackling in the hearth. The room was completely empty though, which was sort of weird? She meant, the castle _was_ huge, and the student population was _tiny_ — there were, what, five hundred kids total? There were probably more than that many in _just her year_ at Beauxbatons. (Beauxbatons _was_ the largest magical school in Europe, and Hogwarts was _far_ more selective, so that wasn't really fair, _but still_.) But, if they didn't need rooms like this, why did they bother maintaining them? Hmm.

Gabbie went straight for the armchair closest to the fire, because she was _cold_ and fire was pretty.

Harry didn't sit down, leaning against the wall just next to the hearth, his broom propped up against his hip. He wasn't quite looking directly at her..._sort of_, she got the feeling he was trying not to stare. He was clearly being awkward about something, his hands stuck in his pockets, feeling weird and shifty. After a few seconds turning over what he wanted to say, he asked, "I'm sorry but, how does that work, exactly? Veela magic, I mean."

"Why are you sorry?"

"I'm just..." Harry shrugged. "I wasn't sure if it'd be rude to ask."

That was _very_ silly, Gabbie barely managed to hold in a giggle. "It is not _rude_, _la curiosité_. You don't have veela here, you don't know. That is not rude."

Harry huffed, rolling his eyes — not actually annoyed, just being silly, because Harry was silly sometimes. "Well, fine, bad on me for trying. Just, you can turn into a great bloody bird? How does that work, exactly?"

"Aahhh... _Véritablement_, it is opposite, I can make of myself this. This," she said, gesturing to herself, "is not real, not... It is _compliqué_." Was it _compli...cked?_ Eh. Anyway, it wasn't actually _that_ bad, she just didn't know how to say it in English. It was hard to explain it in French, honestly, human languages didn't tend to have the words for these things. And why should they? Human languages were obviously meant for human things, they wouldn't have needed to come up with words for things outside of human experience. "Do you know how my People came to be?"

"There was a ritual a long time ago, right? Lyra said something about that once, I think."

"Yes, a ritual. Much time ago, before written, ah, _l'istòria_, our ancestors did the ritual to change themselves. They were human, and they become veela." Well, technically, veela and lilin differentiated from each other generations down the line, but that wasn't really important to explain. "When we are born, we are human...or not _truly_, it is _compliqué_. We have the shape of humans, in any case. But when we mature, that changes. We echo that ritual of our ancestors, change like they did. When the Fire comes the first time, it burns away the human things, and we are different. I can choose to use the human shape, but it is not real, not truly." She...thought that made sense.

"So..." Harry frowned at her — not annoyed, just turning what she'd said around in his head, his interesting warm-cold mind sparking. "The...bird thing is your _real_ body, this one is, like, a transfiguration. Like wilderfolk."

"Wilderfolk?" she repeated, blinking. The fire was very nice, she was warm enough now, so she shrugged off her borrowed cloak. His cheeks going a little pink, Harry's eyes tipped up to the ceiling, silly boy. "I don't know this word."

"They're, um, part-human... I don't know how to explain it, exactly. I've only ever met one, a friend of Lyra's." As he spoke, he pushed an image toward her. More than an image, really, a whole memory, though it was very fuzzy and vague — in a forest, she thought, meeting a strange, blonde-haired girl who was also a playful, white-yellow wolf.

"Oh! Yes, okay, _wilderfolk_ they are called. A boy in my class, Dragí, he is a wolf too."

"In your _class_? I didn't think wilderfolk usually went to school."

"It is not common, no." Dragí's particular case was exceptional, and also very sad — his whole tribe had been murdered by stupid racists, he'd been found starving and alone by Cvétka, whose family had brought him home with them before they'd realised he was anything other than an ordinary wolf pup. Apparently, their parents had thought Cvétka was making it up when she said her "new pet" was a boy sometimes until he'd just turned up at the dinner table human-shaped, very naked and very confused by the adults' confusion.

Cvétka and Dragí had, just, the _funniest_ stories sometimes. Their poor parents...

"Yes," Gabbie said, dragging herself back to awkwardly trying to explain these things in a language she _really_ didn't speak well enough, "it is like wilderfolk. Not the same precisely — the wilderfolk are born like they are, and for us, it is something that changes at a certain age. I was twelve when I changed. But yes, the same idea."

"Huh." Harry was quiet a moment, blankly staring at nothing, his warm-cold magic still churning with some unspoken thought. Until he spoke it, anyway. "So, it's not something you'd be able to teach me, then."

Gabbie couldn't help it, she burst into giggles. While she went on, Harry shot her a glare — a slightly uncomfortable glare, not having the extra layer of the cloak was obviously making him awkward (she was aware the material of her shift was slightly sheer, and didn't really cover much to begin with, but she'd been around humans for years now and she _still_ sometimes forgot how weird they could be about some things) — so she took extra care to push her feelings at him. She wasn't laughing _at_ him, it was just a little adorable, wanting to learn to fly, Harry's fascination with the whole thing, it was cute. Also, part of it was relief, that Harry was _so_ okay with what she was that he was wondering if he could be too, and Lyra had said Harry was the _most normal_ person she knew, so that had good implications for dealing with other British people. Which meant this flying away to Hogwarts idea was going _very_ well, she'd probably be able to stay the whole term!

Because Papa was full of shite, she was fine.

Of course, it was also funny because, "No, silly, I can't teach you. It's not a thing I _learned_, it comes to us naturally. It is possible you can do a ritual to make yourself one of us, but that is the only way." In fact, that was _very_ possible — their People had been created through ritual magic in the first place, and Auntie Lise had advanced those sort of fundamental alterations through blood alchemy (when it came to the People in particular) quite a bit over the last decades. This sort of thing was over Gabbie's head, but she'd heard recently that there were some political difficulties involving Auntie Lise's work, people concerned if Auntie Lise's trick became too common they might breed themselves out of existence.

Personally, Gabbie thought this was ridiculous — when the Calling came, it came. Whether Auntie Lise had helped someone have children with a human lover had absolutely no bearing on whether or not they'd end up having children naturally, the clans that were working with her just had half-human children _in addition_ to the ones they would have had normally. It didn't look great, politically, that Aunt Chloé hadn't heard the Calling since meeting Auntie Lise, but that didn't mean anything. Aunt Chloé was barely sixty — the People had long lives, and they were (theoretically) fertile for literal centuries, there was still plenty of time.

One of Auntie Lise's side-projects at the moment was actually just this thing, turning a human into a veela. Or, the thing she was doing was actually less complicated than that — she was working on it specifically because Gabbie's baby cousin Maëlie, Lise and Chloé's youngest, _badly_ wanted to be a full proper veela. Bad enough she was seriously depressed about it sometimes, which was apparently a thing that happened with some of the other half-human kids around, it was a problem that had started turning up the last few years. Gabbie had only even heard about the political issues going on places she wasn't paying attention because Auntie Lise, explaining this thing she was looking into, had said it'd solve them neatly: if only even a _small_ portion of the half-human kids decided to undergo this second ritual, it'd effectively _increase_ the birth rate, so silly concerns about them somehow being bred out of existence would be even sillier than they'd been before. That wasn't the _reason_ Auntie Lise was doing it, she'd started looking into it just because Aunt Chloé had asked her to find some way to help Maëlie — she was hoping to have it ready before Maëlie got to the age she should be meeting the sky, which was still a couple years away — but still, it didn't hurt.

But anyway, Maëlie was only _half_-human, so it'd probably be easier than doing it with a full human like Harry, but Gabbie was still certain it'd be possible for Harry to become one of them if he really wanted to. She seriously doubted he did, she was just thinking, it _was_ actually possible for him to learn veela things...it'd just involve an extended blood alchemy ritual that didn't exist yet, so. (Not to mention, it'd probably have some consequences, what with him being the head of a British noble family and everything.) There was a much simpler solution than all that. "You know, if you want to fly, you can learn to make yourself into a bird. I don't know how you say it, in English, but I know that's a thing humans can do. You can't be the _same_ bird as me, you'd be very smaller, but you can still be a bird."

His previous irritation gone, even smiling a little now, Harry shot her a doubtful but light look. "I didn't think animagi could choose which animal they get to turn into."

Gabbie mouthed _animagi_ to herself a couple times — it was obvious where it'd come from, that was just a very silly portmanteau, she thought. "I think you do. I don't know, my People cannot learn that, but how else will it be chosen? I think, if you learn it because you want to fly, you will learn a shape that can fly. That has sense, I think."

"Really?" That almost childish excitement was back, his warm-cold mind pleasantly shivering, his smile stretching into a grin. "I thought you just— I'll have to ask Sirius about that. He's my godfather, you know, he's an animagus. He pulled it off while he was still in school, so, it's possible he'll have ideas, I should do that."

"I don't understand, what is he taking off?"

Harry laughed. Because apparently he needed to get revenge for her giggling at him earlier. _Rude_.

And so Harry started talking about his godfather (uncle/cousin) Sirius — he had mentioned him earlier, in passing, just never spoken of him extensively. Gabbie was slightly surprised when she put together she _had_ actually heard of this Sirius Black before, he was one of the people who had been sentenced to life in Azkaban without a trial back in the early 80s. Britain's use of dementors in a prison was one of the reasons their reputation was so horrible, just chucking people in there _without any formal process at all_ had started a big international scandal in the wake of the Knights' little insurrection, people were still talking about it over a decade later, especially since this Sirius had just recently been revealed to have been innocent the whole time. Some people on the Continent actually called for other CIS nations to put together an international mission to occupy Azkaban, disperse the dementors, and basically convert the island into a prison-hospital, helping the inmates recover from _state-sanctioned psychological torture_ while also determining if they should even be there in the first place. (It was generally assumed a significant proportion of the population would end up being released.) Papa, who supported doing such a thing, said they hadn't enough backing at the moment, but if incidents like Sirius Black's wrongful imprisonment kept coming up, it was only a matter of time.

This might be just her, the People tended to _hate_ being confined, but Gabbie thought Azkaban was _completely horrifying_, the stuff of nightmares. Though, that there were humans all over Europe who also thought it was awful suggested it _wasn't_ just her, which was really just sort of baffling. She didn't understand how British people could _possibly_ be comfortable with the existence of such a place within their country.

She was distracted out of her silent tangent about how _confusing_ it was that Azkaban was a thing people let exist by a subtle shift on the magic in the air. It felt a lot like when Evi shadow-walked up to her and paused for a moment just on the other side, checking if she was awake and alone before appearing...except it couldn't be Evi, of course, and there apparently weren't any vampires at Hogwarts — Gabbie vaguely remembered Lyra saying something about a _Miss Stacey_, she wasn't sure, she'd been too tired — so it was probably Lyra herself. (It was still slightly weird that the quiet girl could shadow-walk, but apparently wasn't a vampire or part-demon, Gabbie had a thousand questions but she hadn't really had the chance to ask.) Remaining in Shadows just out of sight, the looming presence drifted over her, Gabbie's skin itching, like she were being examined somehow. And then, abruptly, Lyra left. Okay, then.

Harry's Sirius actually reminded Gabbie quite a bit of Uncle Émi, she was in the middle of a story about him orchestrating a drunken brawl that had taken over a good quarter of the commune (and eventually transitioned into an orgy, naturally, though she didn't tell Harry that) at a party one night — for no _real_ reason, just for fun, some people were just like that — when the door clicked open, Blaise walking inside. He paused only a couple steps into the room. "Did Lyra not show up? I thought she'd get here before me."

"Because Lyra always just goes along with what you ask her to," Harry said, feeling a bit exasperated.

"She was here." Both boys turned to her, she shrugged. "For a few seconds, I think she went to—"

Lyra appeared in the middle of the room, magic black and playful flooding the room (but _silent_, without any hint of feeling underneath, that was still a little creepy), face split in a wide grin. There was, Gabbie noticed, a dress folded over her arm. "Right, I had to run to Ancient House quick to find something — why does _everyone_ have to be taller than me?! — but yeah, I think this should fit you."

—get her something to wear, was what she'd been about to say. Gabbie popped up to her feet, leaving her borrowed cloak behind. Harry's face went a bit pinker, eyes tipping up to the ceiling again, because he was silly — _obviously_, if she had a problem with him seeing her in just this little shift, she wouldn't let him, she didn't get it, outsiders were weird. Lyra held out the dress to her, a silky thing in purple, a few glints of gold here and there. Idly, she wondered if Lyra had gotten something in the Empire's colours on purpose. Eh, didn't matter, she just threw the thing over her head.

"Er, won't she kind of stick out? I thought you were picking up school robes."

"It's Samhain, and there are a lot of guests about, I bet you less than half of the students will be in their school uniforms. Here..." While Gabbie was still pulling her hair out of her collar, Lyra slid up behind her, started fiddling with the laces.

And then _yanked_, the cloth clenching in a band around Gabbie's waist. She yelped, choked back the urge to set the dress (and Lyra) on fire, hissed through her teeth, "Not so tight."

"Oh, right." Lyra picked out the laces a bit, loosening to something _much_ less uncomfortable. "Worse than Maïa, honestly. You're just lucky I remembered not to bring you anything with a corset."

Gabbie shuddered.

After a brief moment, Lyra was done. Gabbie idly smoothed the cloth of the dress with her hands, rolling her shoulders, and tried not to feel too self-conscious — this thing was rather looser than most human girls would probably prefer, she could pluck the material away from her skin easily, but it was still clingier than she would like. Not that feeling uncomfortable wearing a thing was unusual. Honestly, Gabbie preferred to avoid clothing entirely, but that really wasn't an option most of the time. Boo.

(A pervasive preference for nudity was another thing the People and wilderfolk had in common. Harry probably didn't realise how close to the mark he was with that comparison.)

"Oh, and, this will solve your _hey why is there a little veela at the Gryffindor table_ problem," Lyra said, pulling a hat out of nothing and holding it up to Gabbie.

It was a little bowler hat, with a card stuck into the band reading PRESS, like the sort of thing sometimes seen in old-timey muggle photographs. _Unlike_ in the old-timey muggle photographs, the letters spelling PRESS were seemingly hand-drawn in a dizzying mix of brilliant colours, with extra curly bits at the ends — pretty, but it'd probably be illegible from a distance. Even as Gabbie watched, the letters swirled around, reforming into the word QUIBBLER ("quibble" like _chicaner_?), before switching back to PRESS, back and forth every ten seconds or so. And there were a few big, fluffy feathers sticking out of the band, some of them presumably quills, purple and green and yellow and red.

Oh, also? The hat was a brilliant, neon pink, the band a lurid yellow that didn't match at all.

"How adorable!" Gabbie plucked the hat out of Lyra's hand, turning it over for a moment, some kind of enchantment tingling against her fingers. "It's very colourful, I love it, but I don't think people are going to notice me _less_ if I'm wearing this — it seems very eye-catching, you know." Especially this particular shade of pink against her hair, that was going to clash delightfully.

Her lips twitching with a smirk, Lyra said, "That's what the unobtrusive charm is for."

Gabbie didn't realise until Lyra spoke that she'd just been babbling in French, poor Harry over there wouldn't have understood a word. Oops? Oh well, that static she felt on the air was probably Blaise translating for him. "I still don't know what that is."

"It's a spell — a class of spells, really — that deflect attention away from the target."

Oh! "Unobtrusive" was _déremarqé_, okay. "But, this is so colourful. And it has a sign on it!" Gabbie said, pointing at the thing. "What is the point of identifying yourself as a member of the press if you're just going to make yourself unremarkable anyway?"

Lyra smiled. "According to Luna, a true journalist should never make themselves part of the story — but they also need to wear a press hat, because true journalists wear press hats."

Gabbie opened her mouth to respond to that, but then closed it a second later. She had absolutely no idea what to say.

"Yeah, Luna has that effect on people. You can keep the hat if you like, by the way, Luna doesn't want it anymore. She recently...had a religious awakening, you could say, she has moral qualms with concealing magics these days."

...She had absolutely no idea what to say to _that_ either. (Was Lyra implying this Luna person was a white mage? That's what it sounded like, or maybe just that she was an _Acolyte_ of Truth, but, wasn't that sort of thing Anathema in Britain?) So she just shrugged it off, turned the hat the right way around, and plopped it down on her head. Once she had it properly straightened — and by _properly_ she meant not straightened at all, because obviously hats like this should be worn at a rakish angle, everybody knew this — she grinned at Lyra. "So, how do I look?"

Lyra giggled. "Perfectly ridiculous, which I'm sure is the way you like it." Switching back to _stupid_ English, "Harry, Blaise, get over here, Gabbie needs to touch you to break the unobtrusive charm."

The boys did feel slightly confused, something in their heads strangely twitchy. They were still looking at her, but it looked like it was taking some significant effort, squinting eyes occasionally turning away to flick back again. As she touched their hands, though, their discomfort immediately vanished, the spell broken. (Gabbie held onto Harry's hand a little longer, long enough the pause was probably noticeable, but she couldn't help it, his magic was _very_ pretty, it tingled.) Lyra gave a little lecture about how the spell on the hat worked — it wouldn't make people not notice her at all, it'd just make her seem uninteresting. It would break with skin contact, and if she pushed at a specific person's mind too hard that'd probably break it too. People practised with mind magic might know something was going on — Harry and Blaise had been so uncomfortable because they'd been (successfully) fighting the _nothing interesting to see here_ feeling — but anyone else should be fine. She could still _talk_ to other people with the hat on, they just might sound a little distracted speaking to her, it was fine.

Though they shouldn't sit too close to Maïa, since her occlumency was coming along and she'd probably notice something happening if she interacted with her too much. Lyra would keep her occupied, don't worry about it.

Gabbie couldn't help smiling a little bit at that — yeah, she _bet_ Lyra would keep Maïa occupied.

By the time they were wrapped up, it was already full dark out, the feast should be starting any minute now, they really should be going. With a last cheerful command to have fun, Lyra snatched up Gabbie's borrowed cloak and Harry's broom, then disappeared again.

In the rest of Europe, Britain had a certain reputation, one that was _perhaps_ not entirely fair. From the perspective of older countries, like the Mediterranean states and France and Helvetica and Austria and Bavaria, the British and the Nordmen were thought to be a rougher, less civilised people. Not in a _mean_ way, really, just...kind of condescending. They were thought to be _younger_ nations, like, that they were just behind a lot of the rest of them.

There was, Gabbie knew, _some_ truth to that, depending on how you defined 'civilised'. Both had been beyond the reach of the old Empire — about half of Britain had been Roman, but only half, and not for very long, it barely counted — the very frontier of the known world, had been at the fringes of European society for centuries afterward. Compared to 'civilised' Europe, the British and the Nordmen had remained divided, tribal societies rather longer, had developed the trappings of centralised power and high culture relatively late.

Gabbie didn't even necessarily think this was a bad thing! There was a lot of...pomposity, in this claim of being a 'true' civilisation, an 'advanced' culture, it was honestly sort of irritating, she thought. (Or, maybe she just thought so because the People had been 'civilised' millennia before Rome had even been a thing, and _they_ didn't feel the need to brag about it.) If the British just embraced this perception of being crude, uncultured people, she'd be fine with that.

The Nordmen had done exactly that, in a way. Generally speaking, they had no pretensions of being fancy, sophisticated people, some of them she'd spoken to in the past actually had disdain for the trappings of 'civilisation', thought more 'advanced' cultures were silly fakers for prioritising the impractical things they did. She meant, like, big fancy buildings of granite and gold, pretty silk clothes and feathered hats, fine cuisine, complicated orchestral music and theatre, proper etiquette and dignified, professional leadership, their friends in the far north had adopted very little of these things, and had a sort of pride about it. They weren't concerned with such superfluous, useless things, no, they were a more honest, down-to-earth kind of people — and a freer, more egalitarian people, which, there _was_ a good argument for that, their odd, decentralised society was actually sort of fascinating.

The British, though, going back many centuries, had tried to portray themselves as another 'great' European culture, just as 'advanced' and 'civilised' as the rest of them. Which, the rest of Europe hadn't really taken them seriously, not for a long time. It would be, like, if a group of violent criminals had broken into the estate of one of those ancient magical families that had dotted the Continent here and there, killed everyone and took the whole thing over, then their great-grandchildren went around in high society circles behaving as though they were one of them (which is _exactly_ what the Norman French had done ages ago, actually). The British put on a good show, speaking all the right words and throwing around gold and the right pretty things, but much of the rest of the Continent had considered their pretentions toward 'civilisation' to be only skin-deep. (It hadn't helped that much of their claimed territory had still been largely controlled by disorganised tribesmen.) It wasn't until just before the Statute that the English had actually started to be taken seriously as a real European power — and that was _before_ their absolutely _awful_ civil war, the first few generations after Secrecy they'd been a wounded, traumatised people, it'd taken them a while to recover.

Really, as much as it might sting for them to hear it, the rest of the European nobility had kind of considered the British ruling class to be a bit of a joke. They were interlopers into their society, in a way, _parvenus_ pretenders only a few bare generations removed from common thugs. Which, well, those old families were butt-faces — most of them were dead anyway, exterminated during the Grindelwald-inspired _communaliste_ revolutions across the Continent nearly sixty years ago now — but they weren't _entirely_ wrong about that, were they?

Gabbie honestly thought _that_ particular attitude about the British was condescending and pretentious and all around just kind of silly, but there _was_ an argument for the British being less 'civilised' than most of the rest of the CIS that she did think made a bit of sense. After all, in Britain, only humans had full citizenship rights, and they still had that ridiculous idea of pureblood supremacy, or whatever. Both of those would have seemed right at home in the rest of Europe...back in the 15th and 19th Centuries respectively. And don't forget, Britain was still ruled by a tyrannical aristocracy, but most of Europe couldn't feel _too_ superior about that one — most of them had been much the same until the _communalistes_ had simply killed them all, Aquitania was one of the very few countries that had already been a proper democracy before Grindelwald. If _those_ were the standards 'civilised' was measured by, Gabbie thought they would kind of have a point, but it wasn't where that perception had come from, originally.

Which was what made this kind of ironic, when she thought about it. It was only a short walk from where they'd been waiting for Lyra to the Entrance Hall, which was...well, _very_ pretty, yes, but rather over the top. The whole thing all done up in shining polished granite, the ceiling arching _stupid_ far over their heads — not that Gabbie minded that part, low ceilings made her uncomfortable — gold filigree gleaming all over the place. It was like whoever had remodeled the place (it certainly wouldn't have looked like this when Hogwarts had been founded in the 10th Century) had seen Renaissance basilicas, or some of the more ostentatious palaces owned by noble and royal families on the Continent, and decided they just _had_ to do something similar. The Dining Hall was much the same, the walls if anything even _more_ intricately carved and gleaming, the ceiling was hidden by a very fancy enchantment reflecting the night sky above, magic candles floating all over the place, the plates and goblets covering the tables gleaming fine gold and silver...

The place was making her think _this is some Versailles shite right here_, and that was _not_ a compliment.

Which was funny, because this sort of thing didn't really exist in Aquitania anymore. There were a couple old families that still lived in their fancy palaces and such — Arte's family had been living in the same spot near Narbona for literally two millennia, they'd been adding to and refurbishing the complex the whole time, it was _ridiculous_ — and there were public buildings and churches and stuff that could get quite fancy, especially in major cities like Tolosa and Bordèu and Barcelona and València and Marselha...but most of those kinds of things were solely controlled by muggles these days. And she knew, all the British noble families had big fancy manors and such, and _those_ were certainly crazy places too. Maybe not so over the top as Arte's family's, but the same general idea.

And a lot of the people who weren't in their school robes were in fancy silk, and there was _a tonne_ of food, more different things than she could recognise and some of it very fine-looking — some of it even looked edible, must have had her People in mind, which was nice of them — and it was all just...

The measures by which Britain had gotten their reputation for being uncultured barbarians, they were probably _more_ 'civilised' than much of Europe now, _especially_ after the Revolutions. It was just kind of funny, she thought.

(Of course, because history, Gabbie tended to assume 'civilised' humans tended to not like the People much, so this was probably a bad sign, she guessed.)

The boys led her to the table with the gryphon banners above it — the red and gold colour scheme matched the (old-fashioned) robes of the kids at this table wearing their school uniforms, Gabbie could only assume that meant something. She vaguely remembered something about Hogwarts dividing its students into four groups, named after the famous sorcerers who had started the school, but she really didn't know much about it besides that. (She couldn't even think of all their names off the top of her head.) After a brief hesitation, Harry's head shifting with uncertainty, he picked a spot to sit down.

And Gabbie was introduced — not with her real name, she was Gabriella Lovegood tonight, a distant cousin of another Hogwarts student randomly visiting for the Tournament, which was apparently explanation enough for her presence and her weirdness (by human standards), nobody even commented — to the rest of the school quidditch team Harry played in. (The 'Gryffindor' team, and wasn't that one of the Hogwarts people? the one famous for fighting on hippogriff-back?) They were nice enough, but they were rather short and dismissive with her — she felt Harry's simmering irritation, making the back of her neck itch. Which was sweet of him, but completely unnecessary, and also very silly. She tapped his arm to get his attention, then pointed at her magic hat. Harry let out a huff, clearly not impressed with his friends' rudeness despite the magic affecting them giving them little other choice, but the irritation dribbled away all the same.

Well, the irritation _for her_, anyway, Harry's fellow Gryffindors (she thought she was using that word right) weren't being exactly nice to Blaise either, and Harry _definitely_ noticed, being a legilimens and all. They weren't being _mean_ — they were, like, exasperated with his presence, but not quite outright annoyed, as though they didn't like it but had learned to expect it by now — but they were clearly only tolerating him because he was Harry's boyfriend, and they didn't want to hurt Harry. Which, Gabbie understood _that_ part, but she didn't get why nobody here liked Blaise. He was very nice! and funny! It was weird.

So, she just outright asked. And Gabbie got a lecture on the apparently all-important Gryffindor–Slytherin rivalry. (She _did_ recognise the name Slytherin, they were one of the old British noble families that'd been more involved on the Continent, a Slytherin had been another founder of the school, Blaise was in the section named after him.) The way the rest of the quidditch team talked about it, this silly childish rivalry was _very serious business_, but Blaise seemed to be struggling to hold in laughter the whole time, and Harry started off just uncomfortable, and grew increasingly irritated as the conversation went on. Enough he ended up glaring at his plate and grinding his teeth, Gabbie looped her arm around his, projecting soothing feelings at him, _it's okay, they're very silly, don't worry about it_.

Harry stiffened for a second, but he relaxed. He was just very tired of so many of his friends being stupid about Blaise, and a couple of Blaise's friends he liked, that was all.

Which, that was a _very explicit_ thought she was catching, kind of weird — Harry must be slipping the thought into her head, doing the sneaky mind mage thing, because that was far more specific than Gabbie would be able to pick up normally. And apparently he was still in her head, because he tensed up again, sparks of nervousness threading through his magic, worried she'd be annoyed with him. But she wasn't, that was fine. There was this mind mage back at school she was...well, _not_ screwing — Arte was all proper and weirdly shy sometimes, they hadn't gone further than snogging (which was just kind of confusing, honestly) — but the point was, she was used to it, no big deal.

Harry coughed, his head flaring with embarrassment. He didn't pull his arm out of Gabbie's, though.

(Actually come to think of it, Arte _wasn't_ back at school, she should be here right now — one of the tasks involved a dueling tournament somehow, and she was really good, better than a lot of the older students, she was one of the students too young to enter the Tournament Beauxbatons had brought to compete alongside the Champion. Shouldn't look around to check, though, Arte might recognise her through the Press Hat...)

Gabbie noticed, belatedly, that Papa wasn't at the high table with the other people from the CIS, where he should be. That was...odd.

Anyway, after getting those first few things out of the way, Gabbie didn't actually pay that much attention to the conversations going on around her. Partially because a lot of it didn't really seem very interesting? She meant, it was mostly about quidditch stuff, and Gabbie still didn't _get_ quidditch — it was fine enough to watch, she guessed, she just didn't know or care enough about it to do more than smile and nod (it didn't help that she _hated_ flying on a broom herself, so getting into it had just seemed kind of pointless) — and speculating over who the Hogwarts Champion would be — apparently Angie, one of the chasers on the Gryffindor team, had entered her name, they were hoping it'd be her — but Gabbie didn't know who most of the people they were talking about were, obviously.

Also, they were all talking in very fast, very slangy English, and Gabbie was having a bit of trouble following it. Harry and Blaise could translate for her, mind magic was convenient like that, but then they'd have to explain what they translated, because even if she understood what they were saying she didn't know what or who they were talking about. But that was fine, she didn't really need to know, she could just eat and that was fine. She _was_ very hungry, after all.

Harry was feeling a little bit guilty, about dragging her to a conversation that she couldn't even really follow, much less participate in. But that was silly, she didn't mind. Which, he was in her head, so he should know that. Silly boy. She sidled even closer to him, ended up with her cheek resting on his shoulder.

She was pretty sure she fell asleep at some point. She couldn't help it, she was tired! She'd flown like forever, and hadn't gotten much sleep, and she'd just eaten, and Harry was warm, and it just happened, okay. One of the boys prodded her awake, after she didn't know how long, and she jerked upright to find the lights were darker than she remembered, the gold all over the place moodily glinting, and the noisy chorus of a hundred separate conversations had dissipated, reduced to a low hissing of whispers, like wind through grass.

After a couple seconds glancing around in confusion, she noticed the Goblet on a pedestal in front of the high table, Dumbledore standing nearby. Must be time to choose the Champions, then. Dumbledore was giving a ramble about the Goblet making its decision soon, those who were chosen would go into a side room to get instructions, blah blah.

Gabbie wasn't really listening, she spent most of it just watching Dumbledore. Apparently the rumours about his delightful fashion sense had been spot on — long, old-fashioned robes a bright purple with shooting stars all over the place, very nice. (Too many British people were all stuffy and boring, she thought.) If she was being honest, Gabbie didn't actually know very much about Dumbledore, just what people said, and what people said was very conflicting. She knew he'd been adorable teenage boyfriends with Grindelwald ages ago — by the way he twitched with surprise, this was new information to Harry, which was just absurd (_everybody_ knew that, it'd been in Grindelwald's book!) — but his politics have always been very strange and confusing. Like, if anyone was somehow _communalist_e and _loyaliste_ at the same time, it was Dumbledore, the combination of his support for more populist economics and his whole _let's be nice to muggles_ attitude while simultaneously propping up the old institutions in Britain (and critiquing people dismantling their equivalents on the Continent) was, just, Gabbie wasn't sure how that worked, even. Weren't those things...kind of mutually exclusive? It was weird.

Of course, some of her doubts about Dumbledore were just because he didn't like the People much, everybody knew that. Well, no, it was even sillier than that: he was fine with veela, thought they deserved equal rights with all the other nice people, but not lilin, who were apparently dangerous and nice magical people needed protection from them. But, they weren't really...different things? She meant, it was a cosmetic difference, mostly? It'd be like saying humans with light-leaning magic like Ginevra and humans with dark-leaning magic like Lyra's Maïa were entirely different species somehow, and should be treated differently under the law. Hell, people usually considered her family to be a veela family, but there were lilin Delacours — Gabbie herself was half-lilin! (Though she actually wasn't certain if Dumbledore even realised moon-kissed veela were a thing.) One of the first times she could remember anyone saying anything about Dumbledore was back when she'd been a little kid, seven or so maybe, and one of the Italian states (she forgot which) had decided to give the People within their borders full citizenship rights, and it'd come out Dumbledore had been talking to the leadership there trying to convince them to exclude lilin. For the protection of the rest of their population, because lilin were evil. Naturally.

So, yeah, she didn't know what to think about Dumbledore. He was super famous, obviously, mostly because of Grindelwald-related stuff forever ago, but he was so weird and confusing, she couldn't decide if he was a good guy or a bad guy, or what.

Harry was trying not to laugh at her.

Gabbie was drawn out of her thoughts by a sudden flare of _intensely_ dark magic on the air, the fire in the Goblet shifting to a deep, moody red. A single tongue of flame shot out of it, resolving after a second into a slip of parchment. Dumbledore summoned it to his hand, called out...in Nordic, which was nice of him, she guessed — a significant chunk of the Durmstrang students would have had to learn the local tongue as a second language in the first place, expecting them to all speak English too would just be silly. So, the only parts Gabbie caught were "_Dúrmstrangr_" and "Viktor Krum."

The room erupted in cheers, because of course it did — Gabbie didn't really follow quidditch, but even she knew who Viktor Krum was. (Except, she'd thought he was at least a couple years older? Whatever.) Though, Gabbie had heard girls gossip about Krum before, and she didn't really get it? He was all hard and muscly, and some people liked that, but not her sort of thing, she guessed.

Also, he looked all dour and solemn and, just, seemed like a very boring person to her. No thanks.

For some reason, Harry was trying not to laugh at her again.

Before too long, the international quidditch star (who was apparently still in school?) was squirrelled away in the side room, and the Goblet was flaring again, with another pulse of binding magics. The little circle of paper fluttering in the air was very familiar — even from here, Gabbie could tell it was one of the bits of dyed crêpe paper students at Beauxbatons used to pass notes. She practically held her breath as Dumbledore summoned it to his hand.

Just for a second, his wrinkly brow twitched with a frown. Then, in French, he announced, "The Champion from Beauxbatons is Fleur Delacour!"

The applause this time was _much_ more modest than it'd been for Krum — but Gabbie didn't care, it was Fleur! She barely stopped herself from jumping up to her feet and cheering, or running up and hugging her, as her big sister stood up, gracefully flipping her hair behind her shoulder with the tiniest smug smirk toward the other Beauxbatons students. (Gabbie knew a lot of her classmates didn't like her much.) She could still barely hold it in, clinging to Harry's arm so she didn't do anything too obvious, bouncing in her seat and giggling. "Harry, it's Fleur, it's my sister, she's our Champion! I knew she might be, of course, Fleur is very smart and clever, she's one of the best students in her class, and she can be kind of scary when you make her angry, honestly, that she might be picked is a big part of why I wanted to come to Britain in the first place, but it's her! This is _so cool!_ Ooh, I have to go talk to her later, once Papa says it's okay if I stay, and where is he, anyway, he didn't even get to see Fleur get picked, and do you think she'll win, _I_ think she'll win, she's the best, and this might be kind of mean to say but the People _do_ have a magical advantage over humans when it comes to some things, though they might ward against some of them, depending on what the tasks look like letting Fleur firewalk probably won't be fair, but still, this is—"

His head sparking with amusement, Blaise said, "You realise you're babbling in French, right? Poor Harry doesn't understand a word of this."

...Oh. No, she had not realised that. Oops?

Now both boys were trying not to laugh at her. So mean.

By the time Gabbie had managed to control herself enough she wasn't bouncing and giggling anymore (though she still kind of wanted to, Fleur was the Beauxbatons Champion, this was _so cool_), the Goblet was ensnaring another student with a flare of dark magic, another piece of parchment flying into the air. This one, Gabbie noticed, was rather bigger than the others, much more than was necessary just to write down a name.

Once he had the parchment in his hand, Dumbledore scowled. The silence stretched on for another moment, the much longer pause almost tactile, the anticipation growing so thick around her Gabbie's ears started ringing. "The Hogwarts Champion is Lyra Black."

The first response was a wave of confusion, some perfectly neutral, some so sour it made her skin itch. Which was understandable, she guessed — she wasn't a Hogwarts student, but she got the impression everyone knew who Lyra was (she was impossible to miss), and she technically wasn't old enough to enter the Tournament. Though, according to Blaise, she had just walked across Dumbledore's age line, so maybe she _was_ old enough, Gabbie hadn't gotten an explanation for that. Of course, the Goblet didn't care whether someone was technically old enough to compete. It selected from among the names it was given the person who would be best suited to the task at hand, things like the law or rules made by the professors were completely outside its consideration. (Magical constructs could be very simple like that.) Given what little Gabbie had seen of Lyra's abilities, she wasn't even surprised the Goblet had picked her. She didn't doubt the quiet girl was easily more capable than most of her older peers.

The silence was broken by waves of irritable grumbling and delighted laughter, quickly followed by applause and shouting so loud Gabbie covered her ears — mostly from the Gryffindors, many of whom had stood up or were stomping their feet or otherwise making a noisy nuisance of themselves, but also from the table behind her, who were apparently called Hufflepuffs (though they were rather more reserved about it). Past the guest table, where most were politely clapping, hung a cloud of simmering resentment over the other two tables. Though, even there a minority of people joined in the cheering, mostly younger students, it looked like.

After extricating herself from her girlfriend — Gabbie couldn't isolate her mind from here, but Maïa _looked_ like she couldn't decide if she should be pleased or angry or resigned, so had seemingly settled on a very confusing mixture of all of them — the quiet girl skipped up toward the high table, as light and carefree as a child at play. The dueling kit and the bloody grin on her face mostly ruined the innocent act. At the back of the room, she gave a quick little bow toward the British Queen — Gabbie hadn't needed Blaise to point her out, she'd seen her on television before, though she wasn't certain why she was here (how involved was the muggle British government in the affairs of their mages, exactly?) — before turning back to the rest of the room, dipping into a much deeper, much more florid (complete with the fancy hand swirling), much more _sarcastic_ bow. A lot of the Gryffindors laughed again, but the minds in the room already broadcasting more negative feelings just turned blacker.

Gabbie's neck tingled, her shoulders hunched, she had to remind herself they weren't feeling like that _at her_, she wasn't under any threat. It wasn't hard, she was surrounded with much more cheerful people anyway.

But she was distracted enough she missed the beginning of Dumbledore's speech. She didn't really pay much attention to that anyway, because Harry was talking. "I was kind of hoping Lyra wouldn't be picked."

At her other side, Blaise snorted, his tingling amusement running down her spine made her giggle. (He must still be pushing things at her intentionally, her reactions to other people's feelings usually only became that intense after extended contact.) "Did you really expect anyone else to be picked above her?"

"No, not really. But this is only going to encourage her, she's going to be insufferable."

"You think she needs encouragement to be insufferable?"

Harry huffed, but he didn't disagree.

She had the feeling Harry was about to say something, but he was cut off by the wave of surprise that broke across the room. Gabbie was confused by everyone's confusion until she noticed the Goblet was flaring red again. There was another pulse of dark magic on the air, and Gabbie cringed, practically throwing Harry's arm out of her grasp. Normal veela were uncomfortable around dark magic, but she was moon-kissed, so it didn't bother her — Lyra's magic actually felt rather nice, all bouncy and playful, no idea why, it was weird — but _none_ of the People were comfortable with binding magics. Binding magics had this kind of sick slimy feel to them, which other people apparently couldn't even feel at all, which was just _weird_, being too close to this particular spell was actually making her rather ill.

Thankfully, it was over quickly. Gabbie let out a relieved breath, before realising, belatedly, that the disgusting magic had been binding _Harry_.

She glanced between Harry and Dumbledore, who was staring incredulously at a slip of parchment now, frowning to herself. That should _not_ be possible. She knew Harry had never been anywhere near the Goblet — she hadn't been around him the whole day, but he'd said at lunch that he wouldn't even enter if he could, and she believed him (it was hard to lie to empaths) — and besides, it was only supposed to pick _three_ people. Somebody must have tampered with it.

Harry seemingly hadn't noticed the binding spell (which was completely incomprehensible to her, that thing had been really _gross_), but he was watching Dumbledore with a resigned sort of horror — as though this wasn't happening, this _couldn't_ be happening, why did this shite always happen to him, while simultaneously thinking he really should have expected something like this, because this shite _always_ happened to him...

His voice low, featureless, Dumbledore called, "Harry Potter."

As a storm of disbelief raged around them, Gabbie pouted. It looked like she was in one of those silly Boy Who Lived stories, and she couldn't help the feeling this wasn't going to be one of the happy ones.

* * *

_Hogwarts student population — In canon, Harry's year has exactly forty kids; assuming this is the average class size, that means Hogwarts has a student population of 280. (Of course, JKR claims the actual number is much higher, but there's no direct evidence of this in the original text, and seems completely impractical given the size of the staff.) However, in our headcanon, this is __**not**_ _normal — due to a number of factors over the last century or so, the Hogwarts population is at an historic low. (Some of these factors didn't apply in Lyra's home universe, she's referenced there being more staff before.) Harry's year and above are tiny, but the first and second years are __**much**_ _larger, from a combination of a post-war baby boom and the Death Eaters no longer murdering all the muggleborns before they even get to Hogwarts. So second year currently has about eighty students, first year has just over a hundred, and the class size will probably continue to trend upward for a few more years. Gabbie's estimate of about five hundred kids, what she would have been told back at Beauxbatons, is still slightly high, but it's pretty close._

[_l'istòria_] — _This is Occitan (specifically Gascon), not French. Technically, French is Gabbie's __**third**_ _language, and Gascon, the local language where the Delacours live, is second/first. (The veela/lilin have their own language, which would be Gabbie's first/second, raised bilingual.) Since French is the international language in Europe, she defaults to using it talking to foreign people, but she still prefers Gascon. In this case, she's not 100% certain how to pronounce the English word, but she's pretty sure the Gascon pronunciation is closer than the French (and it is). And yes, I'm aware I think about these things way too hard._

[_déremarqé_] — _I'm pretty sure this isn't a real word. I took _remarquer _("to observe, notice", cognate with "remark"), and just added the prefix _dé- _to it to make an antonym. The spell name should actually have a reflexive pronoun involved, for a meaning of "to deflect attention", but "unobtrusive" is an adjective marking the target of the spell, for which _déremarqué _would be the equivalent. If this isn't perfectly grammatical, that's fine, it's supposed to be magical jargon, and jargon isn't always perfectly grammatical._

[_communaliste_] — _A French synonym for Gemeenschoppist, Grindelwald's followers and allies. The similarity to a modern term for a concept in leftist anarchism is a coincidence. (While by our politics Gemeenschoppismus __**would**_ _be considered left-libertarian, it's not nearly radical enough to be considered properly anarchist, the ideologies aren't interchangeable.)_

[_parvenus_] — _Synonym for _nouveau riche

[one of those silly Boy Who Lived stories] — _It was mentioned in a previous chapter that Gabbie was familiar with a series of children's books about Harry Potter. She'd actually been under the impression he was a fictional character before Lyra told her he was a real person. At this point, she still thinks the name is just a coincidence, nobody has filled her in on what's fiction and what isn't yet xD_

_Oh, reminder, "CIS" is the ICW in French (Confédération Internationale des Sorciers). —Lysandra_

_I love Gabbie, this whole chapter just makes me sit here with a silly, _everything is so very adorable _smile. _

_Heads up, I just started a new assignment at work, and I'm probably going to be working ten or eleven hour days for a while, so my contribution to this fic is probably going to slow down kind of majorly. Which means updates are not likely to be as frequent over the next few months. _

_Also, I've been kind of obsessed with this stupid plot bunny based on something Lily mentions as a throw-away comment in the chapter after next, so I have like, 86k words in a silly sixteen-year-old-Sirius-turns-himself-into-a-girl-and-unintentionally-completely-derails-the-war story now. If it actually develops a plot I may have to post it..._

_Actually, I may have to post it anyway, because I amuse myself. —Leigha_


	28. Samhain — Worst Hallowe'en Ever

"Mister Potter!" Dumbledore called out again, firmly disabusing Harry of any notion that he might– might have _misheard_, or...

The rest of the hall had gone "silent". Not like last night, when the Miskatonites had shown up, but in that way that any room with five-hundred people in it did naturally — the noise level falling dramatically to repressed whispering and titters that were, he thought, more ominous in some ways than _actual_ silence, people staring and pointing him out to their friends who hadn't noticed where he was sitting.

Hermione, well down the table on the other side — away from Gabbie, per Lyra's advice to keep them apart for the sake of Gabbie's plan — caught his eye with a narrow _who do I need to set on fire_ glare. (It still baffled him how many people didn't realise how scary she could be.) Harry gave her a tiny shrug. He hadn't the foggiest.

"I didn't put my name in," he heard himself call back, distantly. "I didn't—" He didn't want to have anything to do with the Tournament, aside from watching, and maybe trying out for the school-wide quidditch team he'd heard about at lunch. He— This was _exactly_ like murdering the undead Tom Riddle, okay — Lyra had decided that it was _hers_, and Harry was _fine_ with that, she could _have_ it! Well, like he'd just been telling Blaise, he kind of wished it had gone to Angie, or maybe the Hufflepuffs' Quidditch Captain, Diggory, but not _him_! He didn't _want_ to be back in the spotlight, everyone talking about him even more than they already were with him (still) not being fucking _dead_. And he _definitely_ didn't want to have this to worry about alongside Dumbledore's awkward trips down memory lane and— Hadn't he just been thinking, earlier today, that it was nice getting to relax for once?!

Having to face some difficult, probably dangerous task or other every three weeks for the rest of the year was _not relaxing_.

"I don't think the universe cares," Blaise murmured past Gabbie's ridiculous Press Hat. She looked very conflicted and slightly concerned, now that Harry was going to have to compete against her sister. Now that someone was trying to _make_ him, whatever. He _wouldn't_ be, if he had any say in it.

"There has to be some mistake!" he insisted, desperate words falling into a resolute and unforgiving void that he had very much hoped to hear filled with _of course there has been, there can only be three Triwizard Champions, it's _in the bloody name_!_ (But of course, Lyra had already left the room, and she would be the one to say such a thing, so.)

"If so, it is not one which will be addressed here and now. Please join the other Champions in the annex," Dumbledore said, more or less calmly. Harry could hear the tension in his voice, see it in the lines around his eyes, but he suspected he knew the Headmaster a bit better than most students, by now.

This was, Harry thought, rising numbly to his feet, quickly shaping up to be the _worst_ Hallowe'en he'd ever had.

"It is okay," Gabbie said, reaching out to grip his wrist briefly, support and reassurance echoing between them. He gave her a weak smile. "It will be good."

_Go on_, Blaise added silently. _I'll call Sirius for you._

Good idea — if anyone could get Harry out of this, it would be Sirius, wouldn't it? He did have all that noble power and privilege going for him, and it seemed like he and Lyra always got what they wanted, even from Dumbledore. And yeah, Sirius might think Harry was completely mad not to want to be involved in this ridiculously dangerous tournament that would completely monopolise his time all year, but if Harry told him he wanted out Sirius would move heaven and earth to get him the fuck out. _Yes, do that, please_.

Blaise grinned, whispering something to Gabbie, who nodded enthusiastically. _In the meanwhile, tell Lyra what happened. Don't sign anything, don't even _agree _to anything, just to be on the safe side. _

Right. Okay. Harry could do that. He started making his way up to the High Table and the annex off to one end, where the other Champions — no, where _the_ Champions (he _refused_ to think of himself as one of them, abso-_fucking_-lutely _refused!_) — were waiting for the judges to join them, explain the rules and tasks and whatever. Every eye in the Great Hall followed him, whispering growing louder as he passed between the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs, as Blaise and Gabbie slipped away, presumably making for the nearest fireplace that hadn't been locked down for added security — one of the professors', maybe?

Snape caught his eye as he rounded the end of the High Table, flitting through his surface thoughts so quickly that Harry couldn't have stopped him if he'd wanted to. Which he _didn't_, for once. As far as he was concerned, the more people who believed he hadn't put his name in and didn't want anything to do with this bloody Tournament, the better! Hogwarts had already become even more than a madhouse than usual, what with the extra judges and the bloody _Queen_, and—

And a horrible, all-too-plausible thought occurred to him as he slipped into the room where the Champions awaited further instructions. "Lyra," he said, trying his _very_ best to keep his voice level, and failing _miserably_. "What did you do?!"

"What is it? Do they want us back in the Hall?" Gabbie's sister asked.

"NO! They pulled my bloody name out of the bloody flaming cup, and I sure as _hell_ didn't put it there, so—"

"What do you mean they pulled your name out of the Goblet?" Lyra demanded, sounding slightly annoyed.

"You know very well what I—"

"No I don't! What the fuck are you _talking_ about?"

Harry felt himself begin to deflate, the idea that Lyra hadn't entered him somehow even more disturbing than that she had. "You mean, you didn't enter me in this stupid Tournament?"

She gave him a flat stare. "Someone entered you in the Tournament? How would you even _kn—_ ..._No_. You— No! If I were going to try to get more players involved, I wouldn't have picked _you_! People _die_ in this thing! And anyway, I _didn't_. I invited the bloody Queen, Saoirse Ghaelach, and four extra judges. _Extra champions_ would be _overkill_, which— Angel!" she shouted at thin air. "Did you do this?!"

The witch from Miskatonic stepped out of a shadow behind Lyra, draping herself over her shoulders to whisper in her ear and giggling when Lyra turned to glare at her from two inches away. Her fury was met with a sunny grin. "Hi." As funny as it was to watch someone treat Lyra the way she pretty much always treated everyone else, it wasn't funny enough to appreciably lighten Harry's mood. Especially since all she had to say was, "No. And if I had, I wouldn't admit to it anyway. That would be _telling_," which was _singularly unhelpful_.

"What has happened, Madam Black?" Krum asked, his voice thick with confusion as well as his accent. "Miss Black said— But there can only be three Champions!"

"Yes!" Harry agreed. "Thank you! Exactly! There has to have been some mistake!"

"Madame Maxime!" Fleur exclaimed, as her Headmistress entered the room, along with all the other judges, _and_ the Ministry representatives, _and_ people from the Queen's and Michael Cavan's security teams, _and_ Professors McGonagall and Snape, _and_ Babbling and that professor from Durmstrang who had turned Malfoy into a ferret for nearly breaking Harry's nose, earlier — bloody hell, was _everyone_ just going to pile in here?! They even brought the now-dark Goblet, setting it on a side table, out of the way. "They are saying that this little boy—" ("I'm the same age as Lyra!" Harry objected, though no one noticed.) "—is to be a Fourth Champion! How is this— Where is my father? The _Confédération_ would, I think, be interested to know that Britain has awarded itself _two_ Champions in this contest they have proposed!"

Oh. Harry hadn't realised Delacour wasn't with the other judges. Come to think of it, he hadn't seen him at dinner, either. Gabbie had said something way back at the beginning of the Feast, but Harry had kind of just assumed he'd shown up at _some_ point...

"_Monsieur_ Régis is addressing an urgent message from home," she said, her low voice slow and careful, thoughts guarded, yet somehow Harry still got the impression that they knew Gabbie was missing.

Fleur broke into a worried babble of French, her sudden anxiety washing over them, only for Snape to snap, "Get a hold of yourself, Miss Delacour. If the situation were any of your concern, I am sure Régis would have alerted you."

Fleur glared at him, hot fury lashing out at this interloper who had _no _business— But then, taking a deep breath, nostrils flaring, she mastered herself, pulling her magic back. "Of course you are correct, _Maître_," she said, stiff and precise and trying too hard to sound calm and dignified. "I apologise for my lack of self-control just then."

That, apparently, was offered to the room at large, and it was Salazar Slytherin — or Shirazi, Flamel, _whoever_ — who said, "Quite understandable, my dear. Think nothing of it. Though, if it will settle your mind, I can assure you both your mother and your sister are safe and well."

Everyone else seemed to be thoroughly distracted debating whether Harry could possibly be required to participate in the Tournament (_no_, if anyone cared what Harry thought), and whether he ought to be allowed to (_definitely not_), and how his name had gotten in the bloody Goblet in the first place (which, Harry still had no idea).

"Are you certain? How do you know?" Fleur demanded, turning wide, desperate blue eyes on Slytherin.

"I have my ways, but yes, I am certain. Now. If I might have your attention?" He turned to the squabbling mob, magically enforced silence falling over the lot of them. Lyra, Harry noticed, looked furious, bloody hypocrite. "Thank you, Sir William. Unfortunately, your rules and regulations do not matter. Magic does not care whether there is a legal requirement for Mister Potter to participate or not. If his token legitimately represents him, he is bound to do so, under the _geas_ of the Goblet."

"But—" he objected reflexively, so surprised that the word actually came out he paused when it did. "But I didn't put my name in! I don't want to compete! And how can there be a _fourth_ Champion, anyway?!"

Slytherin gave him a sympathetic grimace. "I'm afraid your desire to abstain from the competition is equally irrelevant. The Goblet was created in a very different time. It was never meant to choose children to play games. It was intended to find a champion to defend the people of its tribe in times of turmoil, for the good of all, regardless of their feelings on the matter. And you need not enter your name yourself, or even by your own will — though that had, perhaps, been willfully forgotten even in the last centuries before the Hiatus. In the earliest days of its use to choose the Champions for the Tournament, the Lord of each school provided tokens imbued with the essence of those they considered their most talented students, oftentimes without their knowledge. It was considered a great honour to be chosen, especially when it was a surprise. I think it was...Fifteen Sixty-Four before anyone was selected who wished not to participate, and we realised the power of the _geas _on the Goblet."

"But you kept using it _anyway_?!" Harry asked, appalled, after waiting several seconds to see whether anyone else would. Either they wouldn't or couldn't. (He couldn't tell if they were still silenced.)

The man who claimed to be one of the Founders (which was still surreal) shrugged. "_I_ didn't — I was simply an observer, no longer affiliated with any of the schools for _centuries_ by then. But yes, with the _rule_ in place that students must choose to enter themselves. But that is not written into the magic, which functions as it was always intended to do, drawing the competitors to the challenges set as though by fate, and demanding of them their best effort."

Still no one else spoke up. "So. So you're saying that I have to do it. That I don't have a choice."

"Oh, you do have a choice, if not one to be envied. Over the course of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, the tasks proposed for the Tournament became increasingly dangerous as various Heads tried to one-up each other. It was not unusual for students to decide after one or two events that they wished to withdraw, even when they had initially chosen to enter themselves. The Goblet enacts upon those who refuse to represent their people a range of punishments, which is, I think, one of the reasons its use was continued — though of course none of the Lords of the schools would admit it, hiding behind the excuse of _tradition_." The ancient wizard scowled, tired and disillusioned, looking for the first time since he'd appeared as though he might actually have seen _eleven centuries._

Harry wasn't sure he wanted to know, but he had to ask... "What kind of punishments?"

Maybe it wouldn't be that bad, maybe he could just...sit it out. Not even participate, and—

Slytherin's scowl only deepened. "It depends on the reason for the Champion's withdrawal. Some, most often those injured too badly to continue, suffer no further penalties. Those who might continue, but are afraid to risk their lives on behalf of their people, the Goblet has been known to disqualify itself, either by ageing them to extremes or taking their magic or by some other means making them unfit to match their cowardice." Right, so, no. "One's best effort _must _be made. The Hogwarts Champion in Sixteen-Twelve was a fifteen-year-old who tried simply showing up to make a token effort before conceding. He was disfigured with a Mark of Dishonour and his body regressed to that of a five-year-old."

"Doesn't sound like much of a choice to _me_," Harry grumbled.

"What _I_ would like to know..." Snape drawled, in that overly-calm way that normally meant he was about ten seconds from _eviscerating_ someone (usually Neville) for endangering everyone in the Potions lab. Heads snapped around to stare (or glare) at him, as others (Dumbledore included) realised that Snape wasn't silenced. Langley didn't look surprised, though, so Harry thought he must have left Snape out, like he had Harry. "...is how Mister Potter's name was returned _after_ the three Champions were already selected."

"Well, it's not very smart, is it?" Lyra's...cousin sounded as though she was on the verge of laughter. Langley _did_ look surprised that _she_ was speaking, though Harry was less surprised than he was about Snape. Snape might _look_ and generally _act_ more intimidating and powerful, but he hadn't forgotten how it had felt when the Miskatonic witches had made their entrance, even if the power that had surrounded them last night was all but completely hidden now. Angel smirked at the Queen's bodyguard, twiddling her fingers mockingly at him. "The Goblet, I mean. It might've been something impressive once, but by now it's just one of those _slow, simple_, has-been gods. I'm sure it took a lot of effort for whoever to convince it to choose Champions for three groups at once instead of just one, getting it to understand what they wanted from it. But I wouldn't be surprised if someone just walked up and told it that they were submitting a candidate for a fourth group, and that worked."

_Hey_, Blaise thought at Harry_, Gabbie and I got Sirius. We're outside. What's going on in there?_

_Langley's got everyone silenced except Slytherin, me, Snape, and Angel Black. It sounds like I'm going to have to do it, Blaise... Oh, and Delacour's not here because he's dealing with something urgent at home, I think they might know Gabbie's missing already_, he added, trying not to let his fear and anger at the thought that he was going to be forced into this thing overwhelm him.

"You said it wasn't you!" Lyra said, glaring at Angel.

_And Lyra, apparently. He might've just let everyone go, I don't even know._

Professor Lovegood had obviously realised the same thing. "Dumbledore, there _has_ to be _something _we can do — you can't make him compete!"

_So, should we come in?_

"It _wasn't_ me. Though I'm hardly complaining. Adding another level to the game? Should be entertaining. Assuming you manage to keep him alive through the third task." _Wait, _what_?!_

_Why not? Half the bloody castle's already in here._ He let Blaise see through his eyes for a moment, take in the spectacle of two-dozen supposedly qualified adults, silenced or not, standing around with their thumbs up their arses while Harry got completely _fucked_ by a stupid fucking _cup_.

Sirius yanked open the door just as Lyra said, "Fuck _that_, I'll make sure he wins the fucking thing just to rub it in the face of whatever dickhead thought this was a good idea."

"Is that allowed? I thought you had to play to win, or the Goblet turns you into a squib. Also, what've I missed?" he demanded, striding barefoot (_What the hell, Blaise, we could've waited long enough for him to find shoes!_) into the centre of the room in his usual jeans and tee-shirt, his slightly-too-long hair almost as messy as Harry's and a hint of stubble along his jaw. Somehow he managed to look dramatic and imposing despite the casual muggle clothes and the fact that he _clearly_ hadn't been planning on going out. _Might've _had something to do with the feeling of magic on the air that accompanied him, sparking and crackling with agitated fury.

Harry found himself...slightly shocked, really. He'd never doubted that Sirius was a powerful wizard, just, he'd never really seen him make a show of it, he guessed. Not like _this_. Even when he was dueling with Lyra, or when the riot started at the World Cup — he'd been _intense_, but... This felt...genuinely unhinged, like..._almost_ like Lyra, when Harry had tried to stop her running off to join in the riot (which he _still_ thought had been _bloody stupid_). Except where Lyra's magic had felt like a storm about to break, Sirius's was like being surrounded by a fucking forest fire — the difference between dark and light, Harry guessed. And he didn't _quite_ get the impression that Sirius was _losing _control of his temper and his magic, so much as that he was so _very_ furious that letting it go on purpose seemed _completely reasonable_.

_That's why he's not wearing shoes, you see, it's more intimidating._

While on the one hand, Harry would like to say Blaise was full of shite, that actually seemed like something Sirius would do. And he couldn't say it wasn't _working_. The overall effect was...kind of terrifying, really, and putting everyone else on edge, too, Harry could tell.

Blaise and Gabbie, still wearing Luna's Press Hat of Unobtrusiveness, snuck in behind him, edging discretely to a spot just inside the door. Gabbie might not have needed the hat, because every eye was on Sirius, who was turning a slightly demented-looking grin, teeth bared as though it was more a challenge than an expression of amusement, from Lyra and Angel to Dumbledore to Slytherin and finally to Harry.

"Er...pretty much just that," Harry managed to say. "The bit about the Goblet, and how I don't _really_ have a choice."

"Right. Okay, so— Wait. First, why is everyone and their mum in here?"

"We do all have some interest in the matter, Lord Black," Dumbledore said coolly. "Whether due to concerns over the security of the school, or the fairness of the Tournament."

Sirius nodded sagely. "I see, yes... Well, the security around here has been utter shite for years, you're not going to fix it tonight. So Síomha, lovely as ever, say _hi_ to Mike for me, and have a good night." He waved the Irish witch dismissively toward the door. "You—" He nodded at Langley. "—give Her Majesty my best, you'll do more good with her than down here. Fudge, Crouch, if there's any discussions to be had tonight about fairness or diplomacy, _you'll_ do more good in _London_." A quick thumb back over the shoulder underlined the _heavily_ implied _get out_. Both wizards looked mildly outraged, but Sirius spoke over any objections they might've tried to make. "Minnie, haven't aged a day, don't you have students to give detentions to or something? Same to you, Snape. Farewell, I hope to see you again never."

"The feeling is entirely mutual," Snape said, so calmly Harry almost didn't believe he actually saw him flip Sirius off as he strode out the door — the signal the others Sirius had dismissed had been waiting for, apparently, as they all followed, throwing various glares and barbed (or amused) comments at him as they went.

Sirius ignored them all. "Who are you two?" A finger flicked from Professor Babbling to He Who Turns Pricks Into Ferrets.

"He turned Malfoy into a ferret," Harry offered. If anyone heard him, they didn't react. He figured they probably hadn't, because that was _hilarious_, even he thought so, and he wasn't at _all _in a laughing mood.

"They assisted in preventing underaged students from introducing their names for consideration," Slytherin said, sounding vaguely amused by Sirius...apparently taking charge of this bloody conversation, sending off everyone who really didn't need to be in here.

"Bang-up job," Sirius said, giving them the most unimpressed stare Harry had ever seen on him. "With all due respect, get out. That goes for you Champions, too. Congratulations on being selected to represent your schools, I'm sure your classmates are just itching to celebrate with you, go get smashed or something. Where is— Are we missing a judge? Where's Delacour?"

"He has been called home to address a family emergency," Madam Maxime answered, obviously somewhat taken aback by Sirius's no-holds-barred brusqueness.

Sirius snorted. "Ten galleons he's looking for her." He pointed over his shoulder with his thumb, and after half a second of confused silence, turned to make sure Gabbie was still there. "Take off the stupid hat."

She did.

"_Gabrielle!_" Fleur shouted. She practically flew across the room to pull Gabbie into a hug, relief warring with outrage and worry, a torrent of words in an entirely foreign-sounding language (not French, maybe some veela language) following as her younger sister flinched under the weight of it all. After a solid twenty seconds or so of non-stop lecturing, she said, "Please excuse us, I must contact our father," and dragged Gabbie out of the room by an arm, ignoring her very sorry sounding pleas for forgiveness.

Harry winced. He really, _really_ hoped he'd see her again. They'd had such a good day, just sitting up on the roof talking and getting to know each other...

With, of course, the exception of the part where he'd gone in to get Blaise and food and got dragged into a conversation about a school-wide quidditch team, and Malfoy overheard him saying that there was no way in _hell_ he'd beat Harry out for seeker and hit him with some hex that felt like getting punched right in the face — from behind. Cowardly prick. But at the moment, that whole _incident_ didn't really seem all that important given, well, _this_. Fucking train-wreck.

Krum followed the two veela back into the Great Hall without a word, as did Blaise when Sirius told him to find somewhere else to be. Lyra, though, never did anything _anyone_ told her to without complaint.

"But, Siri! I need to be here!"

He _really_ didn't like that answer, hot, furious magic turning to focus on his cousin. "No, you don't. Go tell Cissy her son's currently a ferret—" (Oh, apparently Sirius _had_ heard that. "He's not _now_, McGonagall changed him back.") "—or slaughter fucking acromantulae or tell Snivels there's a fledgling veela somewhere around here, I understand that's partially your fault. I don't really care what you do, but you have nothing to contribute to this discussion beyond being a nosey, sarcastic source of general frustration and I assure you, I have that covered, so _fuck_. _Off_."

Lyra hesitated, glaring at him for a tense second or two before she snapped, "_Fine_. But only because you outed my veela. I'll be back!" and vanished into the nearest shadow.

Sirius rolled his eyes, surveying the people left in the room. "So...you...are all judges, yes? You can stay, and Mira, also okay. Who are you?" he asked Sarah Selwyn.

"The representative from Miskatonic." She, like Slytherin — and Angel, and almost everyone who was left, really — seemed more amused by Sirius than intimidated or shocked into quiet obedience. The only ones who still looked slightly shell-shocked were Maxime and Karkaroff, and Dumbledore just looked annoyed.

"The rep-buh—" Sirius stuttered in confusion, losing just a bit of momentum. "Then what is Angel doing here?"

It was Angel herself who answered, smirking. "Technically, I'm here to represent the school as a judge in your little contest. Sarah's here to represent the Cooperative in your under-the-table summit thingy, and make sure I don't have too much fun."

Sirius hesitated, but apparently decided that he _did_ dare to ask, "Would you smite me if I told you to go away?"

Angel matched his mad grin, tooth for tooth. "Do you really want to risk finding out?"

"...No." He dropped the subject, duplicating the pair of armchairs by the fire several times over and directing them into a circle with a casual wave of his wand Harry couldn't help but envy. "Please, everyone, have a seat," Sirius offered, mockingly formal, "and let us discuss how and why my godson has been entered in your bloody Tournament, and what is to be done about ensuring his safety, given that he is most assuredly _not_ prepared to perform tasks designed with the abilities of fully-qualified mages in mind."

Ordinarily, Harry might've objected to such a characterisation of his own abilities, but given that this fucking thing had been cancelled in the past because the death toll was too high — not just because _someone_ had died, but _scores_ of people, over the years — he found he couldn't really complain.

"Generally," Dumbledore remarked pointedly, to no one in particular, "it is the host's prerogative to offer his guests chairs or not."

"Then be a good host and order drinks." Sirius threw himself into an armchair, almost defiantly, if it was possible to casually lounge _defiantly_. "If you're not going to fulfil your duties to Harry _in loco parentis_ and address situations like this with all the decisiveness and authority you profess to possess — which, may I remind you, I have _no_ reason to think you have any inclination to, given your track record and the fact that you failed to prevent his being entered in the first place — then I sure as fuck will. _Sit_," he demanded, doubling down on his rudeness by offering a chair to the 'host' himself.

"Do give us _some_ credit, Sirius," Mira said, lowering herself onto the chair to his left. "We _have_ taken precautions in designing the tasks to prevent potential fatalities. I am certain that no one will object to providing you with a list of tasks and the safety precautions we have designed for your review."

"I think we very well might!" Professor Karkaroff objected immediately. "What is to stop him revealing to his godson and his niece every detail which might help them to win the Tournament?"

"The fact that I don't give a shite who wins your fucking Tournament, maybe? I just want to make sure Harry gets through the fucking thing alive and in one piece!"

"I second that!" Professor Lovegood jumped in. "I didn't sign up to judge _children _being forced to fight dragons and do underwater cursebreaking, okay!" Fighting _dragons_?! Harry was _so_ fucked! "_Especially_ when they don't _want_ to do it! I'm honestly not certain I _can_ sit by and just watch that sort of thing, so—"

"Please, Miss Lovegood," Selwyn said. "Relax. I'm certain we can develop some sort of emergency extraction protocol — for all of the students, not just Mister Potter. No children will be harmed in the making of this Tournament, you have my word."

"Oh, yes, because I'm _definitely_ going to take the word of a Miskatonic Researcher favoured by the thrice-cursed Dark Itself."

"Are you not equally concerned about the safety of Miss Black? She is at the same level as Mister Potter, is she not?" Madam Maxime asked, her eyes flicking from Sirius to Professor Lovegood, apparently unaware how ridiculous that statement was.

Sirius clearly was, but for once in his entire life _wasn't_ in a laughing mood. His face twisted into a pained sort of grimace as he said, "No. Not even a little bit." Which would have been insulting if it wasn't _blatantly obvious_.

"Hogwarts levels are divided by age, not skill," Slytherin reminded the Headmistress of Beauxbatons.

"Is freedom of religion not a thing over here?" Angel's show of innocence was _shockingly_ convincing — Harry could almost believe that the surprise and confusion, the slight edge of offence and hint of hurt in her voice were real.

Professor Lovegood blinked, shocked briefly into silence. Harry didn't even think she'd _heard_ Maxime's question. "Being possessed by the forces of evil is _not_ a religion, Black!"

Lyra's creepy cousin smirked. "Well, no, it's more like _being _a god, really, than following one, but I think the same concept applies?"

Selwyn glared at her. "Freedom of religion is only _a thing_ on the muggle side, and only then because they think you're delusional." ("Is she not?" Dumbledore interjected, clearly more concerned with that conversation than the one about Harry and Lyra and whether they were going to be completely _flattened_ in the Tournament.) "Did you even read the briefing I prepared for you?"

Angel burst into giggles, plopping down on the other side of Mira. Dumbledore, who had settled directly across from Sirius, glared at her, as though she'd sat so close to him as a deliberate offence. "No, my dear boy." Did Harry detect a hint of mockery in that particular form of address? He thought he did... "I think you'll find it's your insistence that the Powers _don't_ exist that's actually delusional. Of course I didn't read the briefing, Sarah. _Homework _is for _students_. And Little Sister can take care of herself, Ollie."

Professor Karkaroff gave her a rather sideways look, but apparently decided (as did everyone else) that changing the subject back to Lyra and her suitability as a Champion was preferable to getting into a pointless (and probably annoyingly circular) argument about metaphysical philosophy. "Yes, I presume that _this_ fourteen-year-old Bellatrix is as terrifyingly competent as the _original_ fourteen-year-old Bellatrix."

("In somewhat different arenas, but yes," Mira confirmed.)

Not that Harry _disagreed_ about the relative importance of these topics, it just wasn't _quite_ the part of the whole problem _he_ was concerned about. "Lyra entered herself, she _wants_ to be a Champion. I _don't_."

"Much as I hate to agree with a Death Eater—" Sirius scowled at Karkaroff — was he _really_? "—what he said. Little Bella will be fine. And Harry's right: if Bella gets herself maimed or killed doing something stupid, that's her own fucking fault and she knows it. The rules don't change just because she's decided to show off for you lot whilst seeking out near-death experiences for kicks. Harry, on the other hand, isn't completely insane, and didn't choose to enter this contest. So. What are you going to do about it?"

"I think that emergency extraction idea Magistra Selwyn suggested sounded promising. Is that actually _possible_?" Mirabella asked the room at large.

"It...may be," Dumbledore said, clearly mulling over the problem.

"All of the potentially hazardous events will take place on the Hogwarts grounds, yes?" Slytherin asked. Mira nodded. "In that case, yes, the wards can be altered to transport Champions out of genuine mortal peril," he said calmly. A large chunk of Harry's anxiety simply vanished — he might not trust the professors or judges to save him from almost certain death, but the Castle somehow seemed...more reliable. It cared about its people, it wouldn't let him get eaten by a dragon. "Though of course that would have to be taken into account in the scoring..."

"Yes, it would! And I am concerned about Hogwarts having two Champions, regardless of whether the boy was _technically_ chosen as a Champion of some hypothetical fourth school!" Maxime said.

"Seconded!" Karkaroff agreed. "We must put our remaining students' names back into the Fire, make it choose additional champions for Durmstrang and Beauxbatons, too!"

"You can't," Slytherin informed them. "The Goblet cannot be re-lit for another three years. If you want additional Champions, you'll have to do it the old-fashioned way and choose them yourselves."

The enormous headmistress seemed rather shocked by that suggestion. "We... Can we do that, so simply?"

"Yes," Slytherin said, as though this was patently obvious — in the same moment Dumbledore said, "No," and Mirabella, "I don't see why not?" It was she who continued, ignoring the powerful wizards glaring daggers at each other a few feet away — Harry could have guessed Dumbledore and _Salazar bloody Slytherin_ wouldn't get along, no matter how weirdly nice the Founder had turned out to be. (But...wasn't 'Slytherin' actually Shirazi, who was also actually both of the Flamels? Hadn't Dumbledore learned alchemy from the Flamels? ...Did _he_ know who 'Slytherin' really was? Or had Lyra actually just made that up?)

Anyway, Mirabella was talking. "The rules of any given Tournament must be agreed upon by the Heads of the three schools, of course, and it may be politic, I think, to include the other judges in the decision?" Slytherin, whom Harry suspected everyone was starting to see as the authority on how the Triwizard Tournament was _supposed_ to go, broke off glaring at Dumbledore to nod. "And we must not forget that the laws of the International Confederation currently hold sway within Hogwarts' grounds. But otherwise, there are no real limitations on the way the Tournament is conducted. Officially speaking. And logistically, most of the events can easily be scaled up to include more Champions. And we were already intending to allow additional candidates to win places in those which are not so easily adjusted, were we not? Since that has not yet been announced, it would be a simple matter to eliminate that feature and revise the line-up."

"Fine. Then you and I, Igor, must simply pick a second champion for ourselves, agreed?"

"We did not choose our delegations with the thought of forming two quidditch teams in mind," the Durmstranger pointed out.

"So? Send for more students," Angel said. "If you run out of beds in your little boat, I have it on good authority that Hogwarts has more than enough space to house them."

Karkaroff, to his credit, looked to Dumbledore, rather than accepting her offer of hospitality on his behalf. "Albus?"

"Certainly we have enough space to welcome any number of additional Durmstrangers, Igor. It does not, however, seem entirely fair to choose additional champions for your schools when Harry... Forgive me, my dear boy, but you were not chosen for your skills, as such additional champions surely would be."

"No offence taken," Harry lied. "I know I'm out of my league." _That_ was absolutely true, there was just something about the way Dumbledore had put it that rubbed him the wrong way. It _might've_ been the _forgive me, my dear boy_. "I don't want to be a champion at all — I still don't know how it's possible that I actually _am_, just— You can just write any bloody person's name on a bit of parchment and tell the Goblet of Fire they're representing a new school, and they _have to_ participate? Like, I could put in my cousin Dudley's name for Smeltings Academy, and he'd be aged to ninety years old if he didn't show up to _fight a bloody dragon_? How is that even _possible_?"

"Well, no, you'd have to have something of his," Sirius explained, suppressed laughter making his voice a little shaky. Dumbledore, of course, was the only other person in the room who knew anything about Dudley, and obviously didn't think the suggestion sounded as funny as Harry did, now that he was actually picturing Dudders pissing himself coming face to face with an actual dragon. "A token representing them, a personal ornament, something like that, so the Goblet can get a taste of them and their magic, a sense of who they are and what they're capable of. Pretty sure that's the focus for the binding. It wasn't _always_ names written down. Actually, I don't know if they even had writing back when that thing was first carved, that's just how they do it now. So, they must've had something of yours."

"I don't think so, it was just a piece of parchment with my name on...wasn't it?" he asked Dumbledore.

The Headmaster spoke slowly, as though turning over the idea that perhaps the token _wasn't_ legitimate. "It...appeared to be, yes."

"So, I might not be bound to compete in this—"

"Oh, no, you definitely are." Angel hopped up and floated over to the Goblet — apparently, Lyra's creepy cousin could just temporarily ignore gravity. (Had he mentioned she was creepy? Because he felt that could not possibly be overstated.) "Watch."

She reached out two fingers and carefully _plucked_ at something invisible — Harry shivered as he felt a spark of _very_ dark magic vibrate through him, the invisible thing suddenly no longer invisible, but a sickly, impossible, purplish-green thread connecting him to the Goblet.

"So...I _am_ bound to..." Harry said, watching the thread fade slowly back into invisibility. _God, that felt weird_.

Sirius growled under his breath. "Apparently, yes. Which means that _wasn't_ just your name on a slip of parchment. Where is it?" he demanded, the hot, furious magic that had largely faded since they'd sat down flaring back to life.

Dumbledore pulled it from a sleeve with a soft sigh. "Sirius..."

The parchment fluttered to him with a twitch of his wand. He peered at it from a very low angle and sniffed at it (making a face), and finally cast a couple of charms at it, one of which caused it to glow red. An air of seriousness settled over the circle, in the midst of which Lyra appeared — abruptly out of nowhere, as she so often did these days — and slapped Harry sharply across the face.

He pressed his cold fingers to his now-stinging cheek. "What the— _Lyra!_"

She snatched the charred scrap of parchment out of Sirius's hand, brandishing it at Harry's nose. Oddly, she was actually _emoting_, her face twisted with almost desperate anger, her voice almost screeching a little. "What did I tell you about letting people get samples of your blood, Harry?!"

"I..." At the moment, he couldn't recall her saying _anything_ about— Wait, she didn't mean that _completely paranoid_ list of rules and vows and spells to check for poisons and shite she'd made him memorise over the summer, did she?

"Don't! I said _DON'T_ let anyone take your blood, under _any_ circumstances!"

He slid out of his seat, scrambling to his feet so she couldn't loom over him. "Were you spying on—"

"You do _NOT_ get to change the subject, Henry James!" _Fuck_, Lyra _never_ called him _Henry_, and the only time he'd _ever_ heard her call someone by _two_ names was Lady Malfoy, at the World Cup. He swallowed hard. Apparently this _was_ serious. "Blood magic is powerful and dangerous and— It's not _common_, but that doesn't mean you don't have to defend yourself against it! I was _not exaggerating_ when I told you to clean up after yourself even if your arm's just been half ripped off by a fucking hippogriff, or at the _very_ least tell _me_ so _I_ can take care of it!" She stalked forward, glaring up at him — when had he gotten taller than her? — dark magic flooding the room as it tended to do when she forgot to consciously hold it back, spinning into little storm vortexes of wild magic where it ran into Sirius's forest-fire lightness, invisible lightning crackling between the two forces.

Harry tried to step away on pure instinct and very nearly tripped back into his chair. "But— I _wasn't_! It was just a bloody nose!" He'd _maybe_ gotten a few drops of blood on his napkin, he hadn't even _thought_ about it, why the hell _would_ he have? Aside from Lyra being fucking _psychotic_, no one at all, ever, in the three years and counting he'd been in Magical Britain, had _ever_ mentioned _any_ of her ridiculous, paranoid rules — he'd thought she was just being insane, as per usual!

"This is why Severus hates you! You're going to get yourself killed because you're an ignorant little _shite_ and can't be arsed to care about your own safety even when people _do_ teach you how to look out for yourself! You have _no idea_ what kind of shite they could've done to you, with just _one drop_ — your blood _is_ your life, it _is you_! And _you_ are a fucking _moron_, I— If the wrong person gets their hands on your blood, _killing you_ is the _shallow_ end of the shite they can do, the shite _you_ can be _made _to do! If someone makes you bleed, you tell me, _full stop_!" It really should _not_ be possible for an offer to help him to sound so very much like a threat.

He _still_ thought she was overreacting, but, "Okay, okay, Jesus _fuck_! I'm _sorry_, I didn't— It was just _Malfoy_!"

She froze, going uncannily still in a way that reminded Harry of Miss Stacey, but only for the briefest second. "..._Malfoy_?"

"Well, I mean, it might not've even been him, I don't know, he just gave me a bloody nose at lunch, I—"

"_Ooh..._ That little— He is _so_ lucky I'm not allowed to kill him! Fucking with _me_ is one thing, but— No, not getting off track! I'll deal with _him_ later. Draco didn't enter you in this Tournament, not without help, and whoever _did_ mixed your blood into _ink_, which means there's _more_ of it out there, which means I have shite to take care of, but this conversation is _not. Over._" She punctuated the last two words with sharp jabs to his chest.

She vanished, Sirius calling after her, "Don't kill anyone else, either!"

He didn't really sound like he meant it, and he didn't look the _least_ bit upset when Angel informed him, "She definitely didn't hear you."

"Where is she— What the _hell_ was _that_, Sirius?" Harry asked, falling back into his chair and taking a deep breath — he hadn't realised how difficult it had become until the weight of her magic was gone, no longer closing in around him.

His godfather ran his one hand through his hair, tugging at it slightly — a sure sign of anxiety and frustration. "She's going to track down any other samples of your blood that may be out there and destroy them so whoever got to you can't turn you into a fucking puppet, or burn you alive from the inside out, or set a bloodline curse on you, or impersonate you down to the magical signature and frame you for murder, or make a fucking clone of you — and those are just things I actually _saw_ done when I was an Auror! I mean, it's not really _likely_ that we're dealing with someone who has _that_ much knowledge of blood magic, since all they'd've had to do to make that token was mix blood into ink and write your fucking name, but — and I cannot emphasise this enough — that was _not_ an overreaction."

"You realise you sound _just_ as paranoid as she does, right now?"

"Oh, did you _forget_ there's an undead Dark Lord who wants to kill you somewhere on this island?" Harry flushed. He hadn't _forgotten_, it was just, he hadn't... He wasn't _always_ thinking about Riddle! He _couldn't_ think about that all the time, he'd go insane inside a week! "Look, pup. I know you hate it when Bella treats you like a kid who needs to be taken care of, but you are, and in some ways, you do. It's going to take _years_ to teach you everything you need to know about the ways magic can be turned against you by wizards who want to hurt you, and you have enemies _right now_. Bella's mad, yes, but she knows what she's talking about, okay? She _is_ the First Daughter of the House of Black, and she's _really fucking good at it_."

Sirius was, Harry thought, unfairly good at exploiting legilimency for someone who _wasn't a legilimens_. He pushed his _need_ for Harry to take this seriously at him, emotions and memories flooding the space between them — he would fucking _drown_ Harry in this shite if that was what it took for him to get it. Flashes of memories of himself and James when they were kids, Harry's age, thinking themselves grown wizards, and later realising (_terrified_) they hadn't had any idea what it meant, being adults, being responsible for each other and their friends, and being thrown into life or death situations; Lyr– no, _Bellatrix_, when she was Lyra's age or just a little older, laughing, explaining that the _maleficia_, _real_ Dark Arts, were limited only by the imagination and the cruelty of the mages who practiced them; Sirius, very small at the time, thinking this was _so neat_, he could think of _hundreds_ of ways to hurt people, even kill them, _thousands_, maybe, ideas flashing through his mind with disturbingly innocent, childish enthusiasm, most of them starring a five or six year old Narcissa Malfoy in the role of victim, because they'd apparently hated each other even then—

_You were such a fucked up kid I don't even have words_, Harry thought at him.

Sirius didn't dignify that with a response, just kept pushing memories on him. Fighting Bellatrix in the war; her torturing him in front of their family at what looked like a holiday of some sort — _confusion, betrayal_ — which contrasted sharply with her dueling his father to protect him and doing some kind of magic that felt almost like legilimency — it felt like Sirius was dying, and she was showing him _how_, and he was begging her to save him, not even for himself, just to spite his father, and her amusement and pride and _never let them break you_ — and telling the aged Lord Black that if he wasn't going to do his job, she would (with _very_ much the same attitude Sirius had just pulled on Dumbledore) and afterward, a moment of softness, her letting him sleep on her lap, feeling _safe_; a hundred flashes of her teaching him, everything from runes to military strategy games to Greek to curses that weren't _dark_ dark even if they could still be _used_ darkly — _I never told you the _maleficia _are polarised by definition, Siri_ — directing duels between himself and his brother and Narcissa to teaching them how to fly; her giving him his first glass of firewhisky when he was twelve, just home from his first year at school, sitting in a library and talking about what the Family was, what it _meant_, to be the heir to it; a few years later, a conversation devolving into an argument, Sirius throwing a curse at her only for her to somehow _absorb_ it and critique his casting with an absolutely _maddening_ smirk; much younger again, huddled in a bed with Narcissa and Andromeda (maybe twelve or thirteen and nursing a black eye), telling them _shh, be quiet, it's fine, Bella will take care of it_ over furious screaming in the corridor — Bella and her father, Sirius knew — and Sirius, who couldn't even _imagine_ standing up to his uncle, terrified for her, asking _why:_ _Because it's her job, Sirius. It's her job to protect us from them, to teach us and take care of us until we can take care of ourselves_; and Dorea, Harry's grandmother, when her fifteen-year-old godson showed up for Christmas dinner three days early, still shaking from the Cruciatus, giving him that wry smirk that always reminded him she was a Black first, she understood, feeding him chocolate and asking, _Did you think being recognised as an adult would make it easier to hold dissenting opinions within the House?_ and Sirius telling her, _they don't think I'm an adult_, and Dorea sighing, _Bella obviously does_, and a terrifying feeling that he'd just been pushed out of the nest, to fly or fall—

"I really don't give a shite if you _like_ her looking out for you or not — it _is _her job, you _are_ her responsibility, until _she_ decides you can take care of yourself — and if she tells you to do something for your own safety, you _do it_. _Do you understand_?"

Harry didn't even _think_ about objecting. He nodded, falling back into his chair. Somehow, it was a lot harder to brush off the _this is her job_ explanation of Lyra's behaviour — harder to think, okay, yeah, that's what _she_ thinks, _whatever_ — when his blood was being used to enter him in a Tournament that could turn him into a squib if he refused to play the game than when she was, he didn't know, nagging him to learn how to fucking _waltz_ or whatever. _Especially_ with Sirius's understanding of what Bella — or Lyra, they were practically interchangeable to Sirius in some ways — being the First Daughter of their House _meant _still echoing in his thoughts.

"Brill. So, we're done with the Family business shite, then?" Angel said, drawing Harry's attention away from Sirius (and the now-absent Lyra) for the first time in several minutes. Everyone else was...frozen. What the _hell_? The witch broke into giggles. "The look on your face. They're just paused. Well, technically, we're slightly outside of time as you all perceive it at the moment, but, you know, _perspective_. But you're done talking about blood magic now? Because this meeting gets about ten times more tedious from five minutes ago out in the timelines where they hear you spouting off about that shite, all laws and Sylvi — Sarah, that is — trying to be diplomatic without just tweaking that douchebag who doesn't believe I exist and Artemis's little pet into line, because Flamel would _definitely_ notice — er, Slytherin, I mean. Bloody metamorphs switching names on me... So, unpause?" she added, when it became clear that neither Sirius nor Harry had anything to say to— What the fuck were you _supposed _to say to something like that? To someone who could just– just _pause_ the fucking universe?

Actually, no, Harry _did_ have a question, he realised — the same question he'd asked Lyra so many times without ever getting a satisfying answer. "What _are_ you?"

She smiled sweetly at him, looking for all the world like a seventh-year Hufflepuff lab assistant offering to help him with his Herbology practical. "I can show you, if you like."

"No! No, no, _no_!" Sirius objected, sounding just as, well, _serious_, as he had telling Harry off about not listening to Lyra a second ago. "Harry, do _not_ ask questions you don't want to know the answers to!"

"But— What? I _do_ want to—"

"No, you don't! Cassie had it right, earlier, she's possessed by the Dark. She's evil, and you don't want her to show you _anything_ because she will fucking _eat_ you."

The freckle-faced girl grinned at him. "For your information, I hardly ever eat raw souls. They're like raw cookie dough. Delicious, but really not good for you, you know?"

The illusion of sweet innocence shattered as Harry was suddenly reminded of the sense of barely-restrained magic that had accompanied her last night. He shook his head trying to clear it — what the _actual fuck_?! How had he _forgotten_ that, even for a minute?

"I'd probably just hold onto him for a while, since _someone_ wouldn't let me keep Lily Evans. Whether his fragile little human mind would survive the experience... Well, finding out is half the fun." Her grin stretched even wider, showing altogether too many teeth for comfort.

Sirius couldn't seem to help himself muttering, "_Creepy fucking_... Just, yes, fuck, unpause this shit-show so we can get it over with, _please_."

"Oh, right, little Harry has a date with Persephone, doesn't he? Well, we wouldn't want to get in the way of _that_."

There was a _lurching_ feeling like the Hogwarts Express pulling away from the platform, the world re-starting around them even as Sirius groaned, "Right, it's Samhain."

"Sirius, my boy? What does Samhain have to do with...?"

"What? Nothing, just, I'm pretty sure Harry's cursed." Harry was pretty sure that was improvisation, but he also wasn't sure it wasn't true.

"Don't be daft, Sirius, he's not cursed," Professor Lovegood snapped. "Samhain was always shite because Potter was a dick about Lily being one of the Powers' favourites, and you know it — even if you won't admit the sun never did shine out of Jamie's precious arsehole."

"Piss off, Cass, that was why _Yule_ was shite. _Samhain_ was and shall forever _be_ shite because They never decided if They liked Evans or Old Snakeface better, and we all know where that got both of them."

"Generally speaking, _everyone_ likes Evans," Angel said, to general bafflement. "_We_ liked Tom better. He was never quite _Tam_, but he did make lovely art for us."

"And people wonder why I left the Dark," Sirius muttered.

Mira leaned over on his other side to pat his hand, but Harry thought she might've been the only other one who heard him over Dumbledore saying, very precisely and even more coldly, "Might I ask how you knew Tom Riddle, Miss Black?"

She grinned. "A, I haven't been _Miss Black_ for about five hundred years, now, and B, _intimately_... The first time we met it was Nineteen Forty-One, and bombs were falling on London. Lovely night. And just think, if you hadn't sent him back to hell on earth, he wouldn't have been praying for someone to save him, and then where might we be?"

"Angie?"

"Yes, Sarah?"

"Be a doll and stop fucking with poor Albus. Riddle belonged to the Dark _long_ before Forty-One," the more serious Miskatonite assured him. Angel pouted at her. "I believe before we were..._side-tracked_, we were discussing who might have entered Mister Potter into the Tournament."

"Yes," Madam Maxime said, sounding grateful for the change of subject. "Lord Black, what did you do with that token?"

"Er..." Sirius hesitated, obviously unwilling to explain that Lyra had shown up and taken it while they were all _momentarily frozen in time_.

"It's irrelevant," Slytherin sighed. "The fire of the Goblet would have burned away any potential traces, and unfortunately all I can tell you is that no one entered the Goblet Room who was not permitted to enter the castle in general. Because _someone_ decided they wanted to isolate and disassociate the space — and also fold it into a duck."

Angel stuck her tongue out at the Founder. "It was a _swan_. And I regret _nothing_."

"So you're pants at origami, and also we have nothing?" Selwyn sounded _very_ unimpressed.

"Basically...yes. It's not my fault origami is such a fiddly, patient art. And it's not like any of you objected at the time."

"Well, who had an opportunity to get your blood, Harry?" Mira asked. "That was what that last charm was, wasn't it, Sirius?"

Sirius nodded as Harry admitted, rather reluctantly, that it could've been practically anyone in the Great Hall around one o'clock. Which didn't exactly narrow down the list, since everyone who'd gone anywhere near the Goblet had been in and out of the Great Hall several times over the course of the afternoon.

"Well," Karkaroff said, as a frustrated silence settled over the room. "It is too bad that we cannot identify the one who entered the boy, but we have established that he must compete, yes? Which leaves the question of what to do about the unfairness of Hogwarts having a second champion!"

The argument and negotiations which followed were long and repetitive. Harry found himself yawning more than once as they chased each other in circles. _Monsieur_ Delacour arrived around ten-thirty, Harry thought, very out of sorts with Gabbie, and quite unable to hide his pride in Fleur, which of course led to an even _more_ furious argument about the propriety of having judges whose daughters or nieces — or _fine, sister_, _whatever, Angel!_ — were Champions, or who were employed by one of the schools in some capacity other than their Headteacher, or who had been associated with one school or another in the past — which Slytherin quashed firmly by noting that he had at one point or another taught at _all three_ of their institutions, and they would kindly leave the question of his impartiality out of this debate.

When Lyra rejoined them at eleven-thirty, nodding conspiratorially at Sirius, she was obviously astounded that they were all still in the room trying to work out a mutually acceptable solution.

"Are you like, _close_ to an agreement? Because some of us have places to be in about half an hour," she pointed out — interrupting Professor Lovegood making the argument that, since she didn't want to be forced to just sit and watch children endangering their lives, if they decided to cut down the judges' panel they should start with her. (Because Professor Lovegood was really...not very good at this group organisation thing. She was clearly actively trying to get out of it.) "And Cassie, you can't leave," she added, taking a seat on the arm of Sirius's chair. "You agreed to teach Defense all year, remember?"

"But I don't have to watch underage children risking their lives—"

"Oh, come on, how many tasks are even _remotely_ dangerous? Two? Three?"

"They've decided to pick _more_ Champions, by _lottery_, as young as _fifteen_, Lyra! Children!"

"...You _do_ know I'm only _fourteen_, right?"

Lovegood blinked, looking slightly dumbfounded. "I try not to think about that."

"I'm sure they're not going to put _helpless_ fifteen-year-olds' names in. They _do_ actually want to _win_ this thing, you know. And I _did_ invite all of you for a reason. It'd be kind of hard to get replacements _now_."

"Yes," Mira said firmly, "and there would be political difficulties as well. So, here is what we're going to do. Any judge who has a conflict of interest will recuse themselves from the scoring of any Champion they may be biased toward — for example, no Headmaster of any school may score their own Champion; Miss Lovegood may not score any underaged Champion, with the exception of Miss Black; _Monsieur_ Delacour may not score his daughter; Madam Black may not score her sister; and so on, if any more complications arise. The points for each Champion, or each team, for events which were intended to be ranked by adding together your scores out of seven will instead be on a seven point scale, averaging the scores assigned by the judges who _are_ qualified to judge each respective Champion. Can we all agree to this?"

Several judges exchanged narrow-eyed looks with each other, as though trying to divine whether there was any way they might be able to screw each other over (or be screwed over themselves), but eventually they agreed, beginning with Dumbledore's, "I...believe that sounds like a reasonable solution," and ending with Angel's, "I don't care whether you count it, but I'm definitely still going to give Lyra a score. You get a five for putting your name in, by the way. I took off three points for wrecking my swan, but gave back one for general cheek."

"I'm pretty sure I should get another point back because your swan started out looking like a duck. That wasn't my fault."

"It did _not_ look like a duck!"

"Did so. Nyberg said so, too."

"Lyra?"

"Yes, Zee?"

"Stop antagonising your sister," Mira said, yawning behind her hand.

"I second that, Angel," Selwyn said, cutting off the self-described god even as she opened her mouth — probably to antagonise _Lyra_, now that she couldn't respond. (Or, well, she _could_, and probably would, since it wasn't like Mira could actually _make_ her shut up, but since she'd been asked to stop, at least.)

Angel pouted at her...friend? minder? Harry kind of felt like maybe the latter was more accurate...which had all _sorts_ of terrifying implications — because if Angel was a _dark god who ate souls_ and could bloody well _stop time_, what the _fuck_ did that make _Selwyn_? "I was just going to say _fine_, six. She can have her stupid point."

Selwyn gave her a _look_, which practically screamed _uh-huh, right_, but didn't say anything. Everyone else looked at the four of them as though they'd collectively lost their bloody minds.

Mira, being as generally unflappable as Blaise, moved on as though Lyra had never interrupted to demand an extra point for a task that didn't exist. "If that's settled, I propose we draw the names of the additional Champions tomorrow at dinner, and meet with them all afterward to explain the tasks."

The judges nodded and murmured their agreements — variously resentful and reluctant, but agreements nevertheless — rising and shaking hands and finally, _finally_, the meeting was over.

Though of course, the night wasn't. Even as they all filtered out into the Great Hall, he heard Angel saying, "So, Albus, are you coming to the party? You really should, Ariana misses her big brothers, she's always _so_ disappointed when you don't show up."

And worse, they were still no closer to getting Harry out of the Tournament — which admittedly seemed impossibly unlikely at this point — or (as a consolation) figuring out who put him in and _why_.

When everyone else was finally out of earshot, Sirius asked Lyra, "Did you take care of it?"

She nodded. "Whoever did it, they were thorough. Must've known we would try to trace them through the token. They either destroyed the rest of their sample themselves, or they were keeping it somewhere my tracking charms couldn't find it."

"Bella, are you telling me you _didn't_—"

"No, of course not! I'm not a fucking _idiot_, Siri! I used Violetta's annihilation ritual to destroy any and all remnants of the sample we had and any blood spilled with it — threw enough power into it, it should've gotten anything hidden away in pocket dimensions, even. I just couldn't _find_ them first. If they actually existed."

Sirius nodded. "Good. So. Who can we think of who would want Harry to be entered in a potentially life-threatening Tournament, but _wouldn't_ just use the blood they had to kill or enthrall him outright? Because to be honest, I've got nothing."

And to be honest, neither did Harry. That was just fucking _weird_.

* * *

_Sirius is definitely putting on a show here, a bit. He is still **fucking furious**, but this whole 'taking over the meeting' show is carefully calculated to offend Dumbledore without offending the other dignitaries in the room._

_I decided that since Karkaroff is silver-haired in the books, he could reasonably have been approached by the Death Eaters and at least **met **Bella when she was in her young teens, even if he didn't join up then. Otherwise the character is pretty much Sandra's, I've never developed him at all. —Leigha_

_And my Karkaroff has to be modified slightly because of what Leigha's version of what the early Death Eaters were actually like, but it's mostly the same. Basically, he would have been a Scandinavian politician at the time, when he was approached by what was basically a British private army recruiting in Europe. Odd. So, he told the government about it, and was tapped as the Scandinavians' spy in the Death Eaters. (Which he was **not** qualified or prepared for, especially the darker turn it took at the end, hence his terror talking to Snape about it.) The British Ministry didn't believe him when he said he'd been a spy from the beginning, when Crouch threw him back in Azkaban after he voluntarily turned state's evidence the Scandinavians threw a major diplomatic pressure campaign to get him back. His career actually sort of dead-ended, due to the damage British media did to his reputation and psychological issues post-war and post-Azkaban, being headmaster of Drumstrang is not at all what he'd been on track for before. —Lysandra_

_So, Angel's scoring of Lyra is definitely going to be very "Whose Line Is It Anyway?" because how else would that go? And it still amuses me that Harry catches the implication that Selwyn must be terrifying to keep Angel in check, but not that Lyra walked in and out of a space that was **slightly outside of time**, what the fuck. (Though to be fair, Lyra didn't realise that that has weird implications, either. She might not even have noticed the time freeze.) —Leigha_


	29. Samhain — Death's Bitch

Lyra couldn't think of anyone who would want to use the Tournament to kill Harry who wouldn't have just used blood magic to kill him any more than Sirius or Harry, so she and Sirius had spent the better part of the walk out to the Senior Woods trying to come up with other reasons someone might've entered him in the Tournament that _weren't_ just killing him.

They'd really only come up with two options: because they wanted to embarrass the shite out of Harry, or because they wanted to somehow exploit the terms of the Tournament to hurt or disable him. Three if they counted that _some people_ would think it was absolutely fucking hysterical to make Lyra and Sirius try to figure out how to deal with an unknown potential threat to Harry that didn't actually _exist_. (And there was no real point even considering that, because they still had to _act_ as though there was a threat, just in case.)

The only thing they could think of off the top of their heads that the Goblet was known to do to people for violating the spirit of its _geas_ that you _couldn't_ do with blood magic was make someone a squib. Granted, they might be dealing with someone who didn't know that, or just wasn't very _good_ at blood magic, since they wouldn't exactly have needed a lot of experience or expertise to enter Harry in the Tournament. The exact end-goal might not be to make him a squib, but _exactly_ what their hypothetical enemy was attempting to accomplish was irrelevant if they had entered him with the idea that they'd get the Goblet of Fire to fuck him over more seriously than they could themselves.

See, it sounded like the Goblet wouldn't punish someone who _couldn't_ compete. (Much to Harry's disappointment, however, it probably _would_ punish someone who thought to get himself kidnapped or knocked unconscious so that he couldn't compete.) Sirius was pretty sure that it was the _spirit_ of representing their school to the best of their ability that mattered with these things (not that there was actually a rulebook or instruction manual for the Goblet lying around somewhere). And presumably anyone who knew enough about the thing to know how to get it to choose a Fourth Champion would know that, too, so Lyra kind of doubted the name-enterer was trying to seriously fuck Harry over at all.

It _looked like_ the most likely end-goal on the part of their opponent was to embarrass Harry. Lyra wasn't sure if they realised that fucking with Harry was actually challenging _her_, but that didn't really matter any more than the fact that _she_ didn't really know whether the other side actually knew they were even playing a game. She was still going to play and she didn't like to lose. Assuming that was what they were trying to do, the logical opposing strategy would be doing her level best to make whoever entered him — and probably also Fleur and Krum, collateral damage — look like bloody idiots instead.

The obvious way to do this was to make Harry win.

Lyra was pretty sure that _playing by the spirit of the rules_ meant that if she just did things badly on purpose to throw the thing, she'd be fucked — not that she was very good at doing things badly on purpose anyway — but if she found ways to demonstrate her (and by extension Hogwarts') superiority while simultaneously making it much easier for Harry to technically, officially "win" (like taking apart the pre-Tournament task for the Weasleys), that was fine. Even if she technically, officially "lost" the Tournament itself to Harry, she would still be representing her people to the best of her ability — being able to _manipulate_ a contest was arguably more impressive than just _winning_ it — and she'd be _winning_ the _real_ game.

Harry had his doubts about the wisdom of treating this like a game, especially since the other side might not be, but that was silly — it obviously was, regardless of what anyone else thought. It wasn't like she wasn't going to take it _seriously_, all the best games had real consequences if you lost. That was what made them _fun_.

But there was nothing more to be done about it tonight. In fact, Lyra was fairly certain there was nothing more to be done until they found out what the tasks were — she'd seen _some_ of the plans, yes, but only the ones Hogwarts was proposing, and she didn't even know if all of those had been settled on and finalised. So there was no reason not to go enjoy the Samhain Revel with everyone else.

Though, Lyra was kind of surprised how many people had actually turned up for the ritual. Not just a lot of people from Hogwarts she wouldn't have expected — Slytherins and Ravenclaws and even the occasional _Hufflepuff_ from families that didn't hold with Tradition at all — but a fair few students and professors from the other schools, too, and even Michael and Vicky were there.

Angel, Selwyn, and Flamel were there, of course, and Cassie. It seemed Dumbledore didn't care to reconnect with his baby sister, because he wasn't. (Kind of rude, she thought. If anyone owed the dead their remembrance, it was him — _how_ many had died fighting for him? Yeah, a _lot_.) Maïa, Gin, Blaise, and Rachel had met them at the edge of the Forest — them being Lyra, Harry (who was definitely coming _and_ they'd be asking Persephone to keep an eye on him now, as well as just saying _hi_), Zee (who joined them after seeing Karkaroff and Maxime off with Dumbledore) _and_ Sirius.

_That_ one surprised her. Not because Sirius didn't believe in the Powers — of course he did, he was a Black — but she distinctly remembered him saying he didn't want to talk to his dead. Something about feeling guilty for getting sent to Azkaban instead of dying like they all had, she didn't really get it, but she'd long since recognised that that sort of thing _did_ tend to inform normal people's decisions (and Sirius was very much a normal person in some ways), she hadn't expected him to change his mind. Especially since he'd also said something equally inexplicable about not wanting to maybe run into his parents — Lyra would be _thrilled_ to run into Cygnus's spirit, she could mock it for being a _dead, completely impotent_ worthless arsewipe, now, instead of just a worthless arsewipe. In fact, she might have to specifically track 'him' down and do that, it sounded like fun.

"I'm still _really_ not sure about this, Lyra," Harry hissed at her, standing beside her in the circle of witnesses.

It was Sirius, on his other side, who answered. Just as well, Lyra wasn't really _good_ at being reassuring, but again, weird. "I know I was kind of iffy, when I was writing about the Introduction ritual, but you definitely _should_ be here. Death is...universal. It's...nice, being a part of something bigger than yourself and knowing, absolutely no question, that you _belong _there."

Lyra would have to take his word for it, she tended to be kind of..._in_ the ritual, but not _part of_ it. She'd always figured it was because of whatever Eris had done to her mind — she'd never been possessed at this thing herself — but it might very well be because she didn't _belong_ to Death in the same way humans did. (Yep, still kind of weird, thinking of herself as a non-human being.) While it was true that Eris would herself eventually fade back into Magic in the same way human souls did, she was pretty sure that "Lyra" would be long gone by then, her soul subsumed into Eris's being when she died. (She _distinctly_ remembered Eris telling her that Death could suck it, that Lyra was _her_ dedicant.)

"And _how_ is that different from the Introduction ritual, exactly?" Because that was actually on the very, _very_ short list of things _she_ actually felt like she was _part of_, not just kind of playing along, and she didn't see any reason Sirius (or Harry) didn't belong with Magic as well.

Sirius shrugged at her. "Clearly I'm just in a more decisive mood tonight."

_Yes, you're mine. And it's a little of both. Bella's memories of it are more like you feel around the Dark._

"But— I just don't like the idea of magic _taking me over_, okay?"

Weird. _Wait. Does that mean Bella's not _yours _in the same way I am?_ she asked, even as she rolled her eyes at Harry. "_That's_ what you're being so weird about? Just don't _let_ it, then."

"Don't _let_ it? You told me last year you bloody well get _possessed_ by _ghosts_ at this thing!"

"Spirits, not ghosts, very different things — and you _really_ don't get what it means to be a legilimens, do you?"

There was an odd hesitance to Eris's response Lyra didn't know how to interpret. _In the same _way_, but not to the same _degree_._

_How is that even _possible_?_

"What? But, Blaise—!" He cut himself off, probably doing the telepathy thing they did approximately _all the time_.

Harry wasn't nearly as good at carrying on two conversations at once as Lyra was. She jabbed him in the arm with a fingernail to get his attention back. "If you don't want to let them into your head, don't let them in, just let the magic flow through you _physically_. You don't even have to dance if you don't want to."

Eris's amusement shivered through her. _You really _aren't _the same person, obviously._

Oh. Well...she guessed that made sense. Especially since Bella wasn't above _forcing her to sleep_ and fucking with her head so she didn't get to experience the most fun part of the Madness.

"You _do_ have to be here to pay your respects, though," Sirius said. "The Dark said Persephone's expecting you, and you don't stand up Death. Especially not when She's given you as many second chances as you've already had."

_Are you sticking around to say _hi _to Kore?_ Death was one of those entities who had come to encompass so many deities over the millennia that she wasn't really part of "their" pantheon anymore. (Though she and Eris generally referred to her by her Greek face, the one they were most familiar with, she wasn't _only_ Persephone.) It wasn't like anyone ever really forgot that Death existed, and there were only so many ways it could be interpreted, so there were aeons of continuity there, influences from practically every people who had ever existed. She'd probably been the first Power to be more accurately described as a single entity with many faces she could wear than as dozens of distinct entities — the Deathly Power could simulate the personalities of the various Aspects of Death, but they were all one, continuous, _unfathomably_ vast consciousness.

Death was complicated like that, though also simple, in a way — in Death all things were one, after all.

Lyra's Eris wasn't _really_ part of the Greek pantheon either, though. She had inherited some of the earlier Greek Eris's memories because she did hold _some_ continuity with her, but that Eris had died — mostly faded away, with no one acknowledging her — _centuries_ ago. Lyra's Eris was more acutely aware that they could die than she thought most gods probably were — it was rare for them to think about, for lack of a better term, their own mortality. Most of them, Lyra gathered, didn't have a very real comprehension of what it was to fade into obscurity. Eris _did_, so she could be...weird, about Death. In an _even if I hold a degree of undeniable respect for her and wouldn't dare tell you not to give her her due, I don't want to talk to her, so if you'll excuse me, I'll be...anywhere but here_ sort of way. It was one of the things Eris was more _human_ about than Lyra.

_No_, Eris said, not elaborating until Lyra noted that fact, and then only with, _Well, what else is there to say? It's not as though you and she don't both already know how I feel about the whole concept. Give my regards to Lily, I'll be entertaining myself elsewhere._

_Fine, whatever._

Lyra's sense of Eris's attention focused on herself faded as the Master of Ceremonies started the ritual. This year it seemed Thane Rowle had gotten the job, the same Thane Rowle she still owed some form of payback for his role in her little end-of-term adventure last year. (She really should come up with something fun for him — _caloris_ jinxes were child's play, she'd had worse for leaving the table without being excused, but _transfiguring aqua fortis_ to try to _melt her face off_, that _definitely_ required some sort of redress.) The phrases he used were exactly the same as those Lew Bones had used back in Nineteen Sixty-One, though there had been _some_ changes in the ritual since her time.

Particularly noticeable was, after the sacrifice of life (a black rabbit this year), Mallory Prince made the final offering to draw the Veil, slicing her own arm and throwing the blood-covered athame into the fire — _and then_, as the magic was under way, _followed it_, standing in the midst of the deathly flames, chanting the usual invocation, inviting the Dead to join them, to dance and make merry, feel the heat of life and share in the celebration of the eternal cycle, revisiting and remembering together what they once were and so on and so forth, but then going _further_, offering not only _feeling_ — the cut, the blood spilled, was symbolic of pain, and by extension human emotion, the true sacrifice similar to the one Lyra had made to Eris, albeit more temporary — but _herself_, inviting not only the Dead but _Death_ to walk among them, if it so chose.

Using _herself_ as a vessel.

_That_ was different.

As the dance began around her, magic tingling in her veins, Witnesses turning and stepping and clapping as one, spirits streaming through the fire, flitting among them, Sirius and Maïa and everyone else leaving her and Harry standing alone at the edge of the clearing, she found herself wondering aloud if Kore ever actually took them up on it.

"Not usually, no." Lyra turned to see a green-eyed, red-haired apparition, rather more solid-looking than most of the spirits dancing with the celebrants. She wore a simple, brightly-patterned chiton — gold with jewel-like flowers, orange and purple and a rusty autumnal red, and ivy, its leaves in the process of shifting colours, chased around the edges — and her presence was _more_ than any brief, mortal spark, something incomprehensibly _big_ (even by Lyra's standards), threaded into the magic spread through the clearing and stretching away into nothing (_everything_). "It was a good thought, but we don't like possessing humans who don't know what they're offering, and they usually don't."

And she clearly didn't _need_ to, anyway.

Harry beside her blinked in confusion and shook his head, as though that would help him literally shake off the effects of the magic — or perhaps as though he couldn't quite believe he was seeing his mother standing there before him. Which she _wasn't_, actually, though she did _look_ like her.

Persephone clicked her tongue as though in annoyance, her image rippling and shifting to an unfamiliar, round-faced girl, younger than Lily had been when she died, and wearing strawberry-blonde plaits that made her look younger yet. "Happy?" she asked an approaching spirit, her tone far too tolerantly amused to mind having apparently been asked to change her appearance.

Understandable, Lyra guessed — _she_ wouldn't have any trouble telling the goddess from the _actual_ spirit of Lily Evans, but it might be confusing for Harry. And he looked confused enough without two visibly identical entities standing in front of him. Well, not _quite_ identical. This Lily was wearing a more modern muggle dress, the skirts long and heavy, in a blue so dark it was almost black, speckled with white like stars or (since it seemed more densely speckled toward the bottom) falling snow — more the sort of thing Lyra would expect Persephone to wear in Hades than the last-gasp-of-summer costume she'd actually appeared in.

"Thank you, Kallisti," she said distractedly, reaching out to lay an insubstantial hand on Harry's face. His own rose to cover it as though he could actually feel it. (Could he? Lily _did_ seem more present than the other spirits, though Lyra couldn't quite put words to _how_, exactly.) "_Harry_... You've grown up. I know I shouldn't be surprised, but it's one thing to _know_, and another _very_ different thing to see you standing here in front of me."

"Lily? I mean...Mum?" His voice cracked slightly, getting unwontedly emotional.

"Yes, love. Though to be honest, I never did quite get used to that. Being called _Mum_. If you want to call me Lily, that's fine."

"How— What's going on?" he asked, looking from her to Persephone and back.

"Oh, you know how it is — gods impersonating you when they bloody well know you need your face tonight. Harry, love, meet my Lady Persephone."

"Er... Hi? Um, I mean... _Lyra!_" he hissed at her. "_What do I say?_"

"Great party?" Lyra suggested. She hadn't greeted Persephone at all, given the way she'd just walked up and started a conversation it hadn't seemed necessary. "We're not exactly petitioners in the Hall of the Dead at the moment, no need to stand on formality. Well met, Lily. I'm Lyra. Persephone, Eris sends her regards and requests that I make her excuses because she can be weirdly human sometimes, and the idea of dying kind of wigs her out."

Kore rolled her eyes — looking for all the world like any of Lyra's cousins being told they weren't invited to dinner with some distant relative, as though this was anything other than a minor relief. "We know. We know Harry, too, actually. And not just in the _we know all things_ way, we've actually met."

"We...have?"

The goddess nodded. "Several times, though of course you wouldn't remember. The first time you were a babe in arms, and the last few you didn't actually _die_, just got a bit turned around at the border. Young souls tend not to remember that sort of thing very well."

"I— You mean...I almost died? But... I mean, I guess with the basilisk, right? But..._more than once_? When else?!"

"Ah, well, I hear that blood ward _did_ trigger that one time," Lyra pointed out.

"And last year, with the dementors, when you fell from your broom," Lily added. "You didn't exhaust yourself instinctively slowing your fall, you exhausted yourself _healing_ yourself instinctively. Or, well, with a nudge in the right direction."

Persephone nodded. "Yes. And of course, Lily brought you to me when you were only a few months old. She was so proud of herself — like a little cat showing off her first kitten. Adorable."

Lily went _very_ red. "_Kallisti!_ You're embarrassing me in front of my son!"

"Nonsense, there's no shame in loving your child. Though there _is_ shame in terrible puns — she asked me to be your godmother..._literally_."

What, really? _Wow_. Just..._wow_.

It was kind of a well-known fact that ritualists tended to be insane, and Lily Evans _had_ had a certain reputation, but asking a god you weren't even dedicated to to play an ongoing, personal role in your kid's life? Asking _Death Itself_? Asking for a blessing, yeah, sure, that wasn't entirely unheard of — generally wouldn't be asked of _Death_, but— Asking a bloody _Power_ to co-parent with you, though? Lyra was _not_ easily impressed, but that might be the most _impertinent_ thing she'd ever heard of _anyone_ doing, _ever_. "Did you say yes?"

Persephone raised an eyebrow at her. "What do you think?"

Lily snorted at the memory, or maybe just her younger self. "She told me I was being very silly and human, and a bond of godparenthood would be more of an open statement of commitment than admitting that I was dedicated to her in all but name and also might kill me early, because that kind of binding is not intended to be _nearly_ so asymmetrical. But she did promise to look out for you, Harry, love," she added, turning to her son with a fond smile.

She'd promised. _Persephone_. Had promised a mortal that she would look out for her child. And her only objection to being his godparent was that it would probably have killed Lily?

"It's hardly a great burden, pointing him back toward Life occasionally." Did... Did Persephone actually sound slightly _defensive_ about that? Why would...?

Oh. _Oh_... "Are you fucking with me?"

"Er. What?" Of course Harry had no idea how _completely absurd_ his mother was. (And that was _completely absurd_ coming from _her._)

"Gods don't just _do favours_ for mortals because they _ask_, Harry. At least, not mortals who aren't _theirs_. Which Lily _wasn't_, was she?"

"All that lives is mine," Persephone said coolly.

Lyra smirked. "That sounds suspiciously like a _no, Lily never did actually dedicate herself to me_. Just saying."

This time it was Kore who went a bit pink. Lily laughed at her. "I didn't dedicate myself _in life_, no. But I'm certainly hers _now_."

There was something suggestive in her tone, as though that was a _hint_ of some sort.

"So, you dedicated yourself when you died?" Harry guessed, making a valiant attempt to keep up with the conversation. Even though— Wait, no one was telling him that was ridiculous? But... "But...how?" _Yes, that!_ "I mean, Lyra told me people kind of just...become one with the universe, when they die."

"Some more than others," Lily explained. "I gather that the closer you are to Magic before you die, the easier it is to _persist_ within Death. Especially if you have an affinity for certain Aspects. If one of them decides it wants to keep you as an independent consciousness, stop your soul from assimilating, it can."

"Does that happen like, _a lot_, or...?"

"Ah, no. I guess eternity can get kind of boring when you're pretty much _everything_, but most people aren't really...good company, I guess. If you're a god. Too much awe, not enough snark."

"So...Persephone just decided she wanted to keep you...as a companion?" Lyra asked, eyes flicking from spirit to goddess and back again, a smirk tugging at her lips.

Lily shrugged, nodded.

Well, that brought on a whole new, _interesting_ subtext to Lily apparently calling Persephone 'Kallisti' — _most beautiful_. "I can't decide if I like a comment about Kore being Harry's step-mum or you being death's bitch even more than Bella better," Lyra giggled, barely managing to make the words comprehensible. "Little Jamie was _so_ out of his league."

Kore rolled her eyes, didn't dignify either comment with a response.

"James was a good man, Lyra," Lily said, more firmly than she would have expected. "Marley was right — he deserved someone better than me."

Lyra was going to say _define "better"_ (or maybe _define "good"_), but Harry actually managed to get a word in first. Even if that word was just, "Er." He followed it up with, "How does that work? With James. Is he still around, too? Because, I mean, I'd kind of like to meet him, too, you know?"

"He isn't. Or, not in the same way Lily is," Persephone said delicately. "I could bring him here tonight, but..."

"But?"

Lily was far more blunt. "Well, it's not really his scene, is it?"

"Not his _scene_?"

"I never did manage to get him here when he was alive. _Sirius_ came a few times, even, and he was actively trying to reject the Blacks' traditions. But Jamie never really believed in all this. The Potters had been progressive for ages, celebrated secular versions of Christian holidays and everything."

Lily gaped at her for a second. "But... _How_?"

"There's a certain strain of thought in progressive magical theory—" Lily began to explain.

But that was _not_ what Lyra meant. "Yes, yes, I know, they think we're all delusional, brain-damaged, whatever— I _mean_, Jamie's mother was a Black. Yeah, Dorea was fucking weird, but I _know_ she knew Magic. And he married _you_!"

Lily gave a helpless little shrug. "If someone doesn't want to see the truth, they're not going to see it — even when it's possessing their fiancée and saving their bloody life."

"The point Lily was trying to make," Persephone interrupted, "was that James would likely find it very disorienting to be brought back to this side of the Veil as a distinct consciousness."

Harry wilted. "Well, I guess maybe we shouldn't, then..."

"No, actually, we definitely should. I already had a bone to pick with him about disowning Liz, but I demand an explanation of how _Dorea Black's son_ could be a bloody _atheist_!" She glared at the goddess. "Are you going to do it, or do I need to actually invoke him?"

Persephone gave her a _look_, reminiscent of Dru's _you're being a petulant child_ expression, which Lyra assumed meant something similar. Though she imagined that pretty much _everyone_ seemed like children to Death, so maybe it was more like, _I suppose I will tolerate your silly mortal foibles, but I'm not going to help you._

"Seems like kind of a petty reason to force consciousness on him to me..." Lily said. "I mean, what good is yelling at him going to do?"

So, _do it yourself_, was what she was hearing? "Maybe I'm just a petty bitch like that."

"She gets like this, sometimes, when she thinks someone's being stupid for no reason," Harry explained, but Lyra wasn't really listening anymore.

She retrieved her dueling knife from the Shadows, cut her left palm just enough for a few drops of blood to fall to the ground. "James Charles, son of Bellatrix Dorea, son of Charlus Georgius, I summon you. By your name and the blood we once shared, as the Veil grows thin between this world and the next, get your fucking arse over here, I want to talk to you!"

"I...don't think that's how that's supposed to go," Harry said. "And what happened to _never let anyone have your blood ever or I'll go all psychotic First Daughter of the House of Black on you_?"

Lily explained, saving Lyra the trouble. Convenient, since she was in the middle of an invocation, shouldn't really _stop_ to answer questions from the floor. "Blood spilled with intent, as Lyra is doing, is different than blood spilled _without_ intent — _that_ can be used for practically anything. This is already...dedicated, to its purpose."

"...Right. Speaking of my blood being used to enter me in this stupid Tournament, you kind of keep an eye on me, right? Do you know who entered me?"

_Ooh, good question._ "Hurry it up, baby cousin. I'm not getting any younger!"

"Well, _yes,_ but..."

"_But_?"

"But if we tell you, you're far more likely to die sooner than if we don't," Kore informed him.

_Good answer._ Probably the only refusal she could've given to prevent Lyra trying to annoy the information out of her. (Though it was probably also true, Death was one of the more _honest _faces of magic. Too damn old to see the point in lying.) "Jamie, if you don't get over here _right now_, I swear by all the gods and Powers..."

James Potter's form began to coalesce as she made her third demand for his spirit to present itself. (It didn't really matter how rudely she called for him, just that she did it three times — most rituals, she'd found, could be stripped down to a few key components, and incredibly basic necromancy was no exception.) He looked around, clearly as disoriented and confused as Persephone had expected. Understandable, maybe, she guessed, the Dance of the Dead was still going on, the clearing lit by the flickering blue flames of the bonfire, shadows wavering as the Dancers circled it, spirits flitting between them. If he really hadn't ever come when he was alive, she supposed he might not have any idea what was going on at all.

"Lily? What's going on?" he asked, turning to the only person in the immediate vicinity he obviously recognised. "The last thing I remember... Where's Harry?!"

Lily raised an eyebrow at him in a _very_ Snape-like expression of exasperation, pointed at Harry. "Yes, James, I'm quite well. Lovely to see you this fine evening."

"Well _excuse me_ for being concerned about the wellbeing of our _son_ when last _I_ knew, you were supposed to be taking him and _running_— Where is he? What happened? I thought I got— Am I _dead_?!"

"Yes. We both are. For the last thirteen years. Harry's _right here_, he wanted to meet you."

"..._Harry_? My _god_, you're— You're all grown up! You— My _son_! I—" He stepped toward Harry, moving as though to hug him, though his spirit wasn't _nearly _physical enough for that. His hand passed right through Harry's shoulder, his disappointment _much_ more tangible than his 'body'.

"Ah... Hi, James. It's, um...nice to meet you. Sirius talks about you all the time."

"_Dad_, Harry. Call me _Dad_," Jamie insisted.

"He passed the _can you say 'dada' _point a few years ago, James," Lily quipped.

While Lyra thought this was very funny, Harry apparently didn't agree, gaping at Lily as though he didn't recognise her. "Er, sorry, _Dad_, it's just, Lily said I could call her Lily, so—"

James scoffed, throwing a glare over his shoulder at his wife's spirit. "Yeah, well, not surprised. Lily never wanted to have kids."

"I never said I _never_ wanted kids, James, I said I didn't want kids in the middle of a fucking _war_! When we could _die_ at any bloody moment! _Which we did!"_

"Yeah! We did! Apparently! And if we'd _waited_ to have kids, House Potter would be dead, so _who_ gets the _I told you so_, here? Me! I think it's me!"

"Hey!" Lyra interrupted. "I don't care if you were right, you don't get any _I told you so_'s! You're not here to retroactively destroy a marriage that ended thirteen years ago, you're here to explain how the _fuck_ you can _possibly_ be a bloody _atheist!_ And also, while we're on the subject of House Potter, _why_ would you disown Liz? There were only two of you left in the House by that point, you _moron_! And Liz was _fun_! She was the only Slytherin prefect with a sense of humour!"

"What? Who— Are you— Did Sirius have a daughter? Is Sirius still—?"

"Sirius is _fine_. He's over there somewhere," she gestured vaguely at the Dancers. "And _no_, Sirius is my _cousin_, I thought we were _done_ with that question by now!"

Lily put on a _terribly_ exasperated expression, directed both at James _and_ Lyra. Probably because she knew exactly how tedious these next few minutes were going to be. "James, this is Lyra, formerly Bellatrix, Black. She's from an alternate dimension, thirty years in the past."

Sure enough, Jamie's reaction was immediate horror and a small degree of panic. "Bellatrix as in _the_ Bellatrix?"

Lyra snorted slightly. "No, _the_ Bellatrix is and always will be Henry's Bellatrix. Care to guess again?"

"You know what he meant, Lyra, stop being a twat. Yes, Ja– _Dad_, _that_ Bellatrix. Except, um...not quite. Alternate universe Bellatrix. She's, um..."

"Still a teenage version of the Blackheart! What the— Harry, Son, do you— You can't possibly know the things she did, if you did, you wouldn't— Even if she's not _the same exact person_, I'd bet _anything_ she's just as mad and dangerous as our Bellatrix, you shouldn't be anywhere _near_ her! Lily, back me up on this!"

Lyra glared at him. As though he had any right to object to her presence in Harry's life! He was fucking _dead!_ He wouldn't even _be_ here if it weren't for her! "Actually, Other Bella is considerably better at controlling the Madness and all mature and shite, so I'm probably _more_ mad and dangerous than she is. Her hobbies are just...bloodier. Generally speaking. If acromantulae still don't count."

"You're not helping, Lyra!" Harry snapped. "And of course acromantulae still don't count, acromantulae are _never_ going to count! They're _giant man-eating spiders_! They tried to eat _me_, once!"

"Why were you around acromantulae?" James asked, his tone oddly urgent, given that they clearly weren't anywhere nearby _now_.

Lyra ignored him. "Did I know that?" She shrugged. "Fine, acromantulae don't count. Bella's hobbies are bloodier."

("Lily! Did you not hear me say _back me up, here_?!")

"It doesn't matter, you're making a _terrible_ impression, you know that, right?"

"And I should care...why? You know Jamie's dead, right? His opinion of me doesn't count for shite."

("Lily!")

Lily clicked her tongue impatiently. "Don't get your knickers in a twist, Jamie. I'm not backing you up on Lyra being bad company or an inappropriate friend for Harry—" ("_Thank you_!" Lyra interjected. At least _one_ of Harry's parents was sane!) "—for the same reason he was _around acromantulae_. I, unlike _you_, have been keeping up with current events, and Lyra is the most responsible person who seems to have any interest in looking out for our son."

"But— Is _Dumbledore_ dead? And I thought you said Sirius was _fine_! He's not fine _and dead_, is he?!"

"Oh, for fuck's sake, James, I'm not going to fill you in on everything that's happened in the past thirteen years! Remember it for yourself!"

"What do you _mean_ 'remember'?"

"He _is_ fine, he was just in Azkaban because he was stupid and overconfident and really, _really_ sucks at murdering people. And even if he _had_ been around when Harry was little, I don't know if you ever noticed this, but Siri barely knows how to take care of _himself_. You would _not _want him raising your kid," Lyra informed him. Both spirits ignored her. _Rude_.

"I mean, James, that we're _dead_. We're _part_ of the collective consciousness that is _the Dead_, and therefore have access to the memories and knowledge of _every person who has ever died, _or _will _ever die — though I wouldn't recommend trying to remember shite that hasn't happened yet right off the bat. If you want to know what happened, take two seconds and _think about it._ "

"Pretty sure I would rather have been raised by Sirius than Petunia," Harry volunteered, breaking the glaring contest between his dead parents, but not before James's eyes went wide. Apparently he'd figured out how to _remember_ things.

"Yes," Lily said coldly. "You see, now, why I might be generally _annoyed_, at the moment? I died to ensure that our son would be safe, have a chance to live a normal, happy life, without the threat of bloody _war_ hanging over him, and not only did I _not_ manage it, from where I'm standing it looks like the Old Goat has done his best to sabotage my plan every step of the Powers-damned way!"

"Er...I don't think he meant to," Harry objected (weakly). "I mean, he didn't do it to spite you, or to make me suffer, he just..."

"The road to Hell, Harry, is paved with good intentions. And there are not enough good intentions in the _world_ to make up for leaving you with Tuney or putting you in a position where you had to defend yourself from a fucking _basilisk_ with a fucking _sword!"_

"Basili... What the _fuck_?! I mean, well done, Harry, Christ that thing was a _monster_! But what the _fuck_?"

"Yes, exactly! And by what twisted excuse for logic did it seem like a good idea to fight that thing?" Lily demanded, rounding on Harry.

He glared at her, clearly furious at the implication that he'd done something _incredibly stupid_ in fighting for his life. "Well, maybe if you're already _dead_, dying doesn't seem like a big deal, but what was I supposed to do? Let it fucking eat me?!"

"Right?!" James exclaimed, leaping to his son's defense. "I mean, be reasonable, Lils, I can see wanting to throttle Dumbledore for letting things get so out of hand, but you know you would've done the same as Harry if it was fight or die!"

"Yes, but it wasn't _fight or die_! _I_ would've gotten Sev to help instead of that useless twat Lockhart, maybe looked up a few spells to control snakes first, and if I still somehow ended up in the Chamber of Secrets alone and unarmed with a Riddle horcrux and its dying victim, I would _definitely_ have threatened to kill little Gin myself before he could finish subsuming her soul."

James and Harry stared at her with identical expressions of appalled shock. James, presumably more familiar with Lily, recovered first. "Why the _fuck_... Did you even know what a horcrux was when you were twelve?"

"_Leverage_. And no, I didn't. But he obviously needed the little Weasley girl, and it was obviously taking some time for him to do whatever he was doing. Removing her from his influence would be the logical way to stop him. Granted, he _might_ have tried to get the basilisk to kill me before I could kill little Gin, but I suspect he would've been unwilling to risk it accidentally getting her as well, and it _did_ take some time for the snake to arrive after he called it, so that would've been plenty of time to get into position to use her as a human shield. I think he would've been open to negotiation."

"Oh, right, I forgot I married a mad, death-obsessed dark ritualist pretending to be a real person!"

"_Real person_, James? _Really_?! What exactly makes you a real person and not me? Being so sympathetic to people trying to kill you that you won't try to kill them first? You knew _exactly_ what I was when you married me! You _saw me_ channel the everloving _Dark Itself!_ What the _fuck_—"

Lily's tirade didn't end there, but Lyra was distracted by Angel appearing at her back (again) in a soft shiver of dark magic. There was some trick she was doing, Lyra didn't know how, to keep her magic mostly outside the mundane plane, she thought. It didn't feel _nearly_ as strong now as it was when she and her stupid mind mage had made their entrance yesterday — hadn't really, at any point since, even when she had them isolated in time, earlier. (Which had been _really fucking weird_, the shadows all _prismatic_... That didn't really capture it, but it was the only way she could think to describe them with one side moving in the fourth dimension, and the other _not_.) But this close to her, Lyra could still feel it. That was most of the reason she didn't immediately pull away from her.

She didn't really like physical contact just for the sake of it, and especially not from people she'd barely met. She'd pretty much written off Zee's (and Blaise's) obsession with touching people as a Zabini thing, like using smell and touch to communicate was a wilderfolk thing, right up until that night she and Sirius (and Blaise and Harry) had gone on an adventure in muggle Los Angeles and gotten drunk and experimented with muggle drugs. Now she was writing it off as some kind of brain chemistry weirdness. But even when she was high, she still hadn't wanted to touch anyone she didn't already know fairly well. She _did_ actually want to touch Angel, though, which was weird. (Even the fact that she recognised it as weird as she did it didn't stop her from leaning into the sisterly embrace.)

"Someone was talking about me," Angel offered, by way of explaining her presence. (Not that she really needed to.)

"Angelos," Persephone said, "I have to say, I didn't expect to see you here tonight."

"I didn't expect to see a House Potter domestic tonight, and yet here we are. Are you doing that on purpose?"

At first, Lyra thought Angel must be talking to Persephone, because she had no idea what she was talking about. Even after a few seconds, though, Death failed to answer. "Er...what?"

Angel giggled. "Right, I'll take that for a _no_, then. Really just makes the whole thing more amusing."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That would be telling, wouldn't it?"

"The child has a right to know what she is, Angelos."

Lyra felt the witch's sigh against her back. "_Fine_. I guess. It's funny, though, watching people around her figure it out while she considers herself nothing out of the ordinary."

In point of fact, Lyra didn't consider herself to be _ordinary_, she was obviously exceptional in any number of ways. But she _was_ fairly certain that she wasn't _that_ different from the average human, or at least the average Black. She craned her neck to glare at Angel. She was only a few inches taller than Lyra, but still slightly behind her, made things awkward. "_You_ brought it up! What are you talking about?"

"Mmm. What do you think it means to be an Avatar?"

She had a sneaking suspicion that this was going to be one of those conversations like _What do you think it means to subsume darkness_? One of those, _surprise, you're way less human than you thought_ conversations. "Well I _thought_ it just meant being kind of low-key possessed all the time, but I'm guessing you're going to tell me I'm wrong."

"You're not _entirely_ wrong. Anyone dedicated _outside_ of the Covenant, or anyone dedicated under it to an Aspect they _don't_ naturally resonate with, that _would_ be the first step toward becoming an Avatar, and a pretty big one at that. But still only the first step. Actually _being_ an Avatar means you are entirely indistinguishable from your Patron. Your desires are their desires, in accordance in every way. You wield their power and speak with their authority, but _you_ don't really exist anymore as an independent entity, becoming more like an extension of your Patron inhabiting your body."

Lyra was pretty sure she didn't get it. "But, aren't all dedicants extensions of their Patrons?"

"No, dedicants are worshippers. They further their Patrons' interests, but they are still their own creatures. I am an _Avatar_ of the Dark. In a lot of ways, I _am_ the Dark. We grew out of most of the traits that distinguished the human Angelos Black from the Dark hundreds of years ago. Bella is a _dedicant_ of Eris. Even though her soul resonates with Eris and they're in constant contact, she values her autonomy too highly to let the distinction between the two of them grow fuzzy. _You_, on the other hand, are a baby Avatar. Lyra Black is still her own person with her own interests and desires, but the division between Lyra and Eris is growing less and less obvious. Case in point: Bella would think it horrifying if I were to tell her that she was losing herself to Eris; _you_ think it's perfectly natural for you to grow more similar to Eris over time, and still don't get why it should be a big deal."

Well that was...perfectly accurate. "Are you reading my mind somehow?"

"No, in some timelines you say something to that effect instead of just thinking it."

So, Angel could see other timelines? _Weird_. Really fucking neat, but weird. But Lyra could bug her about what that was like later, she would be here all year. "Well why _should_ it be? It's not like Eris and I don't disagree on shite."

Angel shrugged. "Ask Bella. But most of the shite you and Eris don't agree on, you'll grow out of eventually. Even I mellowed after a few decades, and the Dark is a lot more hands-on than Eris when it comes to causing conflict and destruction. The manipulation and anti-Statutarian maneuvering Bella is doing right now, or you turning this Tournament into a political powderkeg, is actually a lot more her speed than leading a war from the front lines."

...Oh. Well, it wasn't like Lyra didn't _know_ that — Eris pretty obviously disapproved of her risking her life just because it was fun, and that probably _was_ the biggest source of disagreement between them, but... She still didn't think she understood. Even if they _did_ agree that Lyra running off to play in riots was a bad idea (which, objectively it probably _was_, but Lyra didn't care, she _needed_ to let go every once in a while, or she'd _actually_ go insane), that wouldn't make them the _same person_ any more than Lyra and Bella were the same person. She didn't _feel_ like she was _losing herself_ or whatever. And she hadn't missed Angel saying she was only the Dark _in a lot of ways_, not _all_ ways, so _obviously_ one could be an Avatar without _entirely_ losing one's human identity. Lyra belonging more thoroughly to Eris than Bella did, which she presumed was what Angel meant about her caring more about maintaining her autonomy, also wasn't anything she didn't already know. But Eris had said that was a difference in _degree_ not in the fundamental relationship between them. "So, for practical purposes, what does that mean? Like, why should it matter?"

"Oh! Right! Got off track. Powerful magical beings have an effect on the magic around them, a sort of gravity to their presence. An _influence_. That's the reason sorcerers are so inherently fascinating, and also why more powerful mages are less likely to be affected by them — they have their _own_ gravity, kind of balances things out. Avatars, being an extension of a much more powerful magical being than any human sorcerer, have a similar effect on ambient magic, though it tends to be more subtle, affecting only the aspects of magic they're most closely related to. You're only a baby though, you have more influence as a fledgling sorceress than an Avatar. I doubt normal humans notice your presence making them any more arrogant or impatient or generally antagonistic at all. Spirits tend to be more easily swayed, though." She shrugged lightly, nodding toward Lily and James as though this wasn't an absolutely _fascinating_ bit of information about the nature of magic.

Lyra was _definitely_ going to have to think about it more later, consider how it affected the model she and Maïa had been developing for their book. "And you can do this on purpose?"

"Oh, sure! But Sarah tends not to like me starting wars for funsies, and then _we_ get in fights, and last time we destroyed like half of the New England coast, and Mummy Dearest actually rewound that timeline to kill it, and she _hates_ changing the past. She threatened to exile me to a pocket universe if we did something like that again, so...only if I don't get caught."

Who the hell had the power to _exile the Dark_? Before Lyra could ask, Persephone pointed out, "You do realise I'm _right here_, do you not, Angelos? And _I_ don't like you going around causing mass disasters and wars for your own amusement either."

"I already promised Sarah I wouldn't kill anyone here, anyway. But yes, you can influence people on purpose. You can also _stop_ influencing them, but you've been slacking on your focusing exercises."

"Focusing exercises are _boring_," Lyra complained, making an effort to feel out her own influence on the magic around her. It was easier than she thought it otherwise might be, given that they were in the middle of a ritual at the moment, lent a bit of regularity to the ambient magic that it didn't normally have. Not that being able to perceive the ripples her presence caused made it any easier to figure out how to _stop_. She could control the _area_ her magic leaked out into (most of the time), but that wasn't changing the 'weight' of it, just making herself more _dense_. "Can I have a hint?"

Angel just giggled. Kore, though, offered, "Fold ambient magic around yourself, like making a shadow pocket out of a vortex." The fact that she demonstrated the effect was _much_ more helpful than the actual explanation. And the consequences were almost instantaneous.

"Who the hell are _you_ people?" James broke off his argument with Lily to demand of them.

A whisper of cold power crept through their little circle, Angel answering before anyone else could. "_I_ am the god your mother forsook when she married your father and fled the House of Black. _That_ is the Queen of the Dead, you're ruining her party."

"Oh, don't stop on my account," Kore interjected. "I do love a good drama."

Angel snorted slightly. She didn't address the comment, but Lyra could hear the laughter in her voice as she continued, "This is Lyra, my baby sister and also the one who summoned you, and the boy who looks like he'd very much like the Earth to swallow him whole at the moment is your son. Hi, Harry! Having fun with your little family reunion?"

"Er... Hi? And, um..." His eyes darted over to the very embarrassed James and still furious Lily.

"It's okay to say _no_," Angel assured him.

"Well, um, no, not really. Could you guys...maybe _not_ fight?"

"Yeah, the only person who should be yelling here is _me_. Though, maybe I should be yelling at Dorea?" She'd kind of gotten distracted by Angel's arrival and thinking about magical theory and lost the fury that had led her to summon Jamie in the first place.

Angel made an affirmative little humming noise. "Charlie, too, but Doe didn't exactly fight to raise young Jamie here in the Dark. Honestly, I've no idea why she was so eager to get shot of the House, but she never did come back for Yule after she married out."

Lyra let out a huff. That was just ridiculous! If you were going to come back for _anything_, it should be Yule. Weddings and funerals and naming ceremonies were just boring social shite — even most of the other House rituals were pretty dull for Lyra, since she wasn't really properly involved in them. But Yule was actually _useful_ and _fun_. And, "There's a difference between not raising your kid in the Dark and letting him become a bloody atheist! I _distinctly_ remember little three-year-old Jamie being introduced to Magic, so—"

"Dumbledore got to him," Lily interrupted.

"Lily!"

"What? He did. Minerva might've been the one who talked about traditional witchcraft like it was little more than superstition in her Theory lessons, but she got that from Dumbledore — and I know you had that _stupid_ metaphysics book he wrote."

"Well, there _wasn't_ any evidence that couldn't have been produced by some method other than an independent magical consciousness, and—"

"—and powerless little boys like to feel like they have more control over the world around them than they actually do?"

"We are _not_ having this argument again, Lily!"

"We don't _have to_, the very fact that you're standing here right now proves that I was right!" Lily said smugly. Lyra was starting to get the impression that she was kind of an antagonistic bitch all on her own, probably hadn't really needed any subtle magical influence to pick a fight upon seeing her husband for the first time in thirteen years. Not that there was anything _wrong_ with that. Not at _all_. She grinned quietly to herself, thinking that Harry's mum was even more _great_ than Maïa's (albeit in a very different way).

"Guys! Please?"

Both spirits broke off their bickering to look at their son, muttering shame-faced apologies.

Lyra glowered at them. "Well, _fine_, I guess I can blame Dumbledore for that along with everything else he's done to fuck Harry over but, Jamie, I also want an explanation for disowning Liz. And don't say it was just Charlus being a prick, you could've brought her back in when he died."

"She ran off to Aquitania to marry a veela! How much more is there to explain?!"

"Er, who's Liz, maybe?" Harry suggested.

"Liz Potter, _a.k.a._ Lise Delacour, Jamie's half-sister — she's about thirteen years older than him, managed to get herself disowned _twice_. Fucking _awesome_ blood alchemist. Did Gabbie not mention her? I distinctly remember telling her you two are cousins..." She frowned slightly, thinking on the argument she'd had with Severus about the little veela. He'd flatly _refused_ to convince Delacour to let her stay, but now that Fleur was the Beauxbatons Champion Lyra suspected Gabbie would just come back if she _did_ get sent home, so.

"She _did_, yes, but I told her I didn't know anyone called Lise, because I've never bloody heard of her! Why did you tell _Gabbie_ about her, but not _me_? I think I have the right to know if I have another aunt, Lyra!"

"Well, technically you _don't,_ because she was disowned. But I assumed she'd died in the War. I didn't even realise she's still alive until Bella ran into her this summer."

Lily nodded. "Yeah, James never mentioned her to me. I didn't find out she even _existed_ until I _died_."

"Why _should_ I have mentioned her? She hadn't been my sister for _years_ before you even started talking to me! We never lived together, I probably wouldn't recognise her if I met her on the street!"

"Oh, you would," Lyra assured him. "She got the Potter Hair. And you can't blame her refusing to play the stupid society betrothal game. I mean, the House of Black considers god-touched ritualists to be proper matches, but I'm pretty sure light progressives think they're just as bad as veela."

"Muggleborns are _human_, Bellatrix! We can't have children with bloody _veela_. It's not the same _at all_. And you _know_ my mother would have had a bloody conniption if I'd brought home a muggleborn!"

"A, Lizzie is mad clever. She came up with a way to get around the biological incompatibilities, apparently — so, while you were worrying about having kids before you died, she already had _three_. And B, kind of proving my point about you making a bad match, but C, Doe might be upset that you brought home a god-touched ritualist, especially if she really embraced the whole _light_ thing politically, but she wouldn't care that she's muggleborn. If Magic takes a personal interest in you, your kids are going to be mages, _full stop_. Being muggleborn is irrelevant." She paused. "Also, it's Lyra."

Jamie flat ignored her reminder that she wasn't _at all_ the same person as Bella. "She wouldn't have _known_ Lily was a ritualist! _I_ certainly wouldn't have told her! I didn't know myself!"

"That is fucking dragonshite, James. I _know_ Sirius told you he saw me at Samhain and Walpurgis!"

And that was also irrelevant, because, "You wouldn't have had to tell her. She was raised in the House of Black before the Covenant was broken. She'd have to be blind and stupid not to recognise that Lily had the Powers' attention, too. Why did you _think_ Sirius liked her so much?"

Granted, it had taken Lyra a bit to put it together, she hadn't noticed when she first met Luna, but meeting Cassie and spending kind of a lot of time with her out in the Forest, away from the magical interference of hundreds of other mages, it was easier to notice a hint of _specialness_ reflected in the magic around her. A vague attention-grabbing attractiveness, like catching a glimpse of something shiny out of the corner of one's eye. Not that she didn't recognise it when she _did_ see it, just, she hadn't really been looking for it. Up to that point, she'd really only associated it with the Family. Looking back on it, she'd decided that it must be less a Black thing and more of a having-Magic's-attention thing, because in hindsight Professor Riddle had had it too, and Flamel and Dora. At first she'd thought it was because they were all ritualists, or especially charismatic, but Harry, Luna, and Theo having it kind of ruled those out.

But she was pretty sure Dorea would have noticed it on Lily. Lyra knew she was herself kind of unobservant when it came to shite like that, and if Doe were trying to get away from the Family's ritual traditions it stood to reason that she'd have been more sensitive to it.

Lily and James broke off their sniping yet again to give her matching _looks_. Harry too, actually. What the hell? "_Why_ are we staring at me, again?"

"Because Sirius didn't _like_ Lily, Lyra," Harry said. Which was _completely baffling_.

"He never did. Hated how Lily got away with being such a two-faced bitch all the time."

"I always thought he was jealous over Jamie, but yeah, no love lost."

Angel giggled, presumably at Lyra's confusion. "Are you sure?"

"Pretty sure, yeah. Even back in first year, he was a complete twat. _Narcissa_ liked me more than Sirius."

"Yeah, before he even knew you were a two-faced bitch, right? And before Jamie decided you were the love of his life?"

James and Lily exchanged a look Lyra couldn't read.

"Yes..." Lily began, though she didn't seem to have anything to follow it up.

"But that was because you were determined to be friends with Snivels, and if you could be friends with a Slytherin that upset his whole _I'm a Gryffindor so I can't possibly be anything like the rest of the Blacks_ attitude."

_Lyra_ giggled at that one. "Well, _someone_ was deluding himself. Or trying to, anyway. You don't start a years-long feud with someone you _really_ don't like, and you definitely don't become the godfather of their child. You fucking flatten them so hard they won't even _think_ of retaliating, or you ignore them as best you can like he does with Narcissa. You _don't_ go out of your way to get their attention and then just prank them and try to sabotage their other social relationships, tempt them into playing games with you. That's the sort of shite you pull on cousins you actually _like_. Definitely friendly. Arguably flirting, even." Granted, a more antagonistic, _Black_ sort of flirting than Sirius's usual Zee-like behaviour, but still.

Lily and James exchanged another _look_. Lily frowned, turned to Kore. "May I...?"

"Oh, yes, do. I can't _wait_ to see what the little runaway puppy has to say about this pet theory of hers."

"Can't you just..."

Lily answered Angel's question, making a sharp gesture toward the Dancers. "Yes, she could just look ahead, but that would ruin the presentation of the drama."

"And we can't have _that_," Angel said, not quite drily, too much laughter in her voice. "You realise that's _very_ silly, yes?"

"No, _silly_ would be looking ahead, and then sitting through the exact same moment chronologically. You're just impatient."

Lyra definitely had to side with Persephone on this one. "Repeating things _is _really tedious."

Angel poked her in the temple. "Traitor."

Sirius wandered out of the dark a moment later looking rather disoriented. "Harry? Lyra? What's—" He cut himself off as he obviously recognised Death, bowing _very_ respectfully. "My Lady, might I ask—" he began, only to be cut off again, this time by Angel's laughter.

"We're entertaining her," Lily explained. "I was the one who called you—"

But Sirius had turned to look at her when she spoke, which meant he'd instantly stopped paying attention because he'd also seen "_James_..." who was the love of _his_ life. His sigh and the way he moved toward Jamie, as if he'd been summoned, was oddly reminiscent of both Lily and James being drawn to Harry.

"Sirius, I—" James's voice broke, overcome with emotion. "Harry said you were in Azkaban, that you– you tried to avenge us? Gods, I'm so sorry, I'm sorry I listened to Lily and didn't tell anyone we'd changed the Secret Keeper, and—"

Sirius looked like he was about to bloody well start crying, too, what the _fuck_?! "It's— It wasn't your fault, Jamie. Or Lily's. It was a good plan, if it wasn't for that _fucking_ Rat — he fooled us all. I tried to kill him, I _wanted_ to kill him, but... I'm sorry! I failed you, I suggested _him_, and I deserved to go to—"

"_Paddy_, don't _ever_ say that! You didn't! Nobody— _You were innocent!_"

"I couldn't stop him, Jamie, and I left Harry with Hagrid to kill him after, and I shouldn't have — I shouldn't have let him out of my _sight_, and then— I couldn't even do _that_ right!"

"We forgive you, Sirius," Lily said. "It was our fault as much as yours. I could have refused to move the Fidelius, James could've insisted we move back to one of the better-warded Potter properties. We could've told the Old Goat to go fuck himself like Frank and Alice did, and refused to sit at home making a target of ourselves. You could've gotten a sex change and married Jamie yourself—"

"_Lily!_" James glared at his wife as Harry gave his father and godfather a _very_ confused look, and everyone else laughed. Honestly, it was more the presentation that was funny, not the suggestion. Lyra was entirely certain that if he'd thought James would be okay with him using that kind of blood alchemy, Sirius would've done it in a heartbeat. The fact that _he_ didn't object kind of made that obvious. Or at least, she thought it did.

"Sirius would have been a much better wife to you, and you know it. My point is, there're a hundred things we could've done differently. This wasn't the worst possible outcome, and there's no point feeling guilty and crying over it _now_."

That Sirius _did_ object to. "Fuck you, Evans, I'll feel guilty about it as long as I damn well please," he snapped, completely nonsensically. Lyra's understanding of guilt generally included that normal people didn't want to feel it at all. Granted, that understanding was admittedly kind of sketchy, but she was...pretty sure that was how it worked?

"Oh, yes, because wallowing in your emotions _always_ works out _so_ well for you..."

"I don't expect you to get it, cold-blooded fucking snake."

"Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say he still doesn't like me," Lily decided.

"Why? _Cold-blooded snake_ is practically a compliment."

"No, it's not!" Lyra had a momentary flashback to Sirius and Snape saying they hated each other in unison — which was funny, because Lyra was pretty sure Sirius liked Snape almost as much as he liked Lily. And then glaring at each other, _exactly_ like Sirius and Lily were doing now. It was uncanny, really.

"Are you sure? Because from where I'm standing, this looks an awful lot like that _I like you but I don't want to admit that I like you_ thing Maïa does all the time. What do you think, Harry?"

All eyes turned to the legilimens in the room. Clearing. Whatever. "Er... It's _definitely_ not the same way Maïa feels about you." Well, _obviously_ — Lyra wasn't entirely certain that the feelings Blaise described Maïa holding for her were even in Sirius's range of emotion. The tendency toward absolutes that went along with the Black Madness didn't really lend itself to that sort of nuance and internal conflict. And Sirius, unlike Maïa, had not been raised with a standard of ethics he had to overcome to be comfortable with the darkness in his own personality. It just kind of looked the same. "He really doesn't _like_ her, but he does trust and respect her, and thinks they understand each other in a way most people _don't_."

"Yeah, okay, that's a better way to put it, but still pretty much what I meant."

Sirius's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Do I even want to know what you were talking about?"

"Whether Dorea would have been able to tell Lily was god-touched. I think she would have. I mean, you see it, right? That way magic kind of draws your attention to her the same way it does to us?"

"Er...I guess? I still don't like her, though."

"Well what do you call it then, when you keep picking fights with the same person and going back and forth one-upping each other and generally recognising each other's abilities and respecting each other as rivals and not wanting to end the game?"

Sirius hesitated. "...Nemeses? That's how you — Other Bella, I mean — refers to enemies that you..." He trailed off as he obviously realised that the word he was about to say was _like_. "Okay, fine, I don't have a better word, either, but that isn't what most people mean when they say _like_. _Most_ people would say I hate her."

"If you hate Lily, then what do you call your relationship with Narcissa?"

"...A more familial sort of hatred? Mutual loathing? I don't know, is there a point to this conversation? Because now I'm out of the Dance, there _are_ other people here I'd like to catch up with."

Lyra rolled her eyes as he sidled a few steps in Jamie's direction. "He's been dead for the last thirteen years. _Almost _as little has happened in his life as when you were being all bored and depressed in Azkaban. But fine, yes, that was all we wanted, you can go now."

Sirius was all too eager to do so, drag James away to talk far from Lily and Lyra herself, but James hesitated over Harry. "Don't take this the wrong way, mate, but..."

And Harry himself was obviously hesitant about asking to be excused to go with them, even though it was clear enough he wanted to that _Lyra_ could see it.

Lily chuckled. "It's fine, love. But before you go, Kallisti, could you please..."

"I suppose. If you're certain. It _was_ your sacrifice, after all."

"Well, _yes_, but I didn't realise Adrestia was going to physically atomise the bastard and get him mixed up in it, and then the Old Goat went fucking about with it — I think at this point it's doing more harm than good."

"Very well, then. Harry? If you would," Persephone beckoned him toward her.

"Er...what are you planning on doing, exactly?" he asked, moving toward her anyway, probably on instinct. (Death had a certain _commanding_ quality to its presence.)

"Reversing a bit of soul magic Lily did to protect you from the mostly late Tom Riddle."

"But, um... Can I ask why?"

Persephone smirked. "Yes."

After a second Harry apparently realised he hadn't actually _asked_. "Oh, well, um...why? I mean, if it's to protect me..."

Lily was the one who answered. "It did its job. It was meant to use my soul to shield yours, protecting you from Riddle's killing curse — he _had_ to use a killing curse, your crib was warded against anything less — and springing a trap to destroy him. But I didn't realise that after _my_ soul was stripped away from you and his _body_ was destroyed, part of _his_ soul might get pulled into the ritual instead, unwillingly."

Lyra didn't think that was the end of the explanation, but the wizards didn't let her finish. "I _knew_ it!" Sirius shouted, while James opted to object to, "You used our _son_ as _bait_?! The _fuck_, Lily!"

"_No_, 'bait' implies that I _wanted_ Mouldyshorts to break into our house and murder us and try to kill him! Which of _course_ I didn't — any plan that involves sacrificing your own life is hardly an optimal solution. If we could've run, I would have. But we couldn't. And yes, I knew that it might come down to that, and planned accordingly, but it _was_ a last resort! It wasn't like I would've done it if he _hadn't_ backed us into a corner. And Sirius, you did _not_ know, stop talking out of your arse."

"I knew you'd done some kind of mad bloody soul magic ritual and there were unintended side-effects! How else do you explain Harry being a parselmouth and a legilimens?!"

"Wait! Does that mean if you, um...get rid of the piece of Riddle's soul I won't be a legilimens anymore?"

"No, Harry, Sirius is being _completely ridiculous_. I guess it's _theoretically_ possible to steal magical talents like legilimency from someone else's soul, but that would be such a ridiculously complicated bit of subsumption you'd probably have to be a master legilimens already to do it. And Parsel is inherited through blood."

"So..."

"Yeah, he could be a natural legilimens, but there haven't been any parselmouths in the Potter _or_ Black families in _centuries_, Lily," Sirius informed her.

«He _does_ have two parents, and _you_ aren't one of them.»

"I don't know for sure, but I think I might've just been insulted," Sirius snapped back. James just stared in mute horror. Lyra giggled to herself, just slightly, because, _oh, no, Jamie, you married a scary dark witch who talks to snakes! This is _terrible! "Also, if you're a fucking parselmouth, why the _fuck_ did you pretend to be muggleborn for ten bloody years?"

«You're a—» "You speak Parsel?!" Harry exclaimed.

«So, to be clear, cold-blooded snake is _not_ a compliment? Because I think you might be obligated to take it as one.»

"Shut up, you, you're not nearly as funny as you think you are." Well, _that_ was a dirty lie, Lyra could see an amused smirk pulling at Lily's lips despite her best efforts to subdue it. "Yes, Harry, obviously, and I _was_ muggleborn, Sirius. There were four squibs who married into the Evans and Harrison families in the three generations before I was born. Any one of them could easily have carried the trait."

"Why didn't you _tell_ me you could talk to snakes?" James demanded.

"Er...because by the time I realised it wasn't normal, I also realised it was one of those things mages are stupidly prejudiced about?"

Jamie, for some reason, didn't seem to believe her. Lyra didn't know why, it seemed perfectly reasonable to _her_ that a muggleborn wouldn't know what was and wasn't normal before going to school. _She_ hadn't had a great idea of what was and wasn't normal, and she'd been raised around magic probably more than James. Granted, she had known Parsel was a relatively rare inherited trait before she went to school, but she hadn't known basic shite like how low the general expectations were for an eleven-year-old's magical competency, and that other children _weren't_ regularly subjected to 'Unforgivable' curses at the hands of their fathers. "You thought it was _normal_. Talking to fucking _snakes_."

"Well, I thought it was weird that they talked _back_. If you'd asked me before I ever talked to one, I would've guessed they weren't intelligent enough — the ones without their own magic, at least. I mean, mice are cleverer than snakes, and _they_ don't really talk back. But in my defense, Pandora was a parselmouth as well, and Cassie used to talk to the more magical creatures, owls and unicorns and thestrals and such. And when we were kids, Sev seemed to think it was normal for mages to be able to talk to all kinds of animals. Kind of _childish_, we mostly stopped doing it before we went to Hogwarts, but not _weird_."

Sirius snorted. "Every time I think you can't be more of a freak, Evans..."

"Sirius!" Harry snapped. "That's my _mother_ you're talking about!" (In concert with James snapping, "Sirius! That's my _wife_ you're talking about!" They even _glared_ identically...)

Sirius gave James the _most_ condescending look. "James, if you don't get it by now— Fuck it, I give up! Harry, I know it can be hard sometimes to accept that your family are evil freaks whose concept of normal is so far removed from reality that _mad_ doesn't really cover it, but that's something we all have to face eventually. It's part of growing up."

Okay, _that_ was funny, even if Harry didn't seem to think so, glowering at Sirius like it _wasn't_ perfectly legitimate to compare Lily to the mad freaks in their own family (Lyra herself included, she was sure).

"Every time I think you can't be more of a twat, Black... It's fine Harry, Sirius has been calling me a freak since we were eleven. It's practically an endearment at this point. And we're getting off track. Honestly, I've no idea what the effect of having part of Riddle's soul bound to you when his horcruxes are finally destroyed might be, so we're getting rid of it. It won't affect your magic at all, though it will make it much more difficult for you to dreamwalk into Riddle's mind. I know you'll be _so_ disappointed about _that_."

"He's been doing _what_?" James exclaimed.

"James. Please don't make me explain the concept of dreamwalking. I _know_ you know this. With part of Riddle's soul bound to Harry's, his mind is, metaphysically speaking, the closest one for him to wander into, regardless of how far away from each other they might be physically. They essentially have a back door into each-other's minds, so—"

"Yes!" Harry interrupted. "I agree! Get rid of the fucking thing!" Though as Persephone reached out a hand toward him, he apparently had second thoughts. "Er, this isn't going to hurt, is it?"

"No, dear," Kore assured him with peculiarly _mumsy_ softness, which sounded odd coming from a girl who looked no older than Lyra herself.

She sort of waved her hand through one of Harry's but, unlike James's had when he'd tried to hug his son, the goddess's actually caught on something, tugging at Harry's soul, a spectral arm separating from his physical form. When it reached the point where he had to step forward and she kept pulling him toward herself, he did, his soul standing about a foot in front of his body (which itself remained standing with a blank, dementor-kissed stare). Unlike his physical body, however, his soul seemed to be wearing a sort of shroud, the remnants of Lily's ritual clinging to him, thousands of interwoven silver threads binding tattered, gossamer scraps of foreign soul-stuff — easily differentiated from Harry's green and gold-limned form by their darkness, and a completely intangible sense of corruption emanating from them. If scraps of a soul could _rot_, Lyra would say these had begun to do so.

"Ew! What the _hell_ is—" Harry cut himself off, looking down at his arms, and then around at the rest of them, his eyes finally falling on his physical body. "What the— Am I _dead_?!"

"I don't think so," James volunteered. "Lily did something like this to Sirius, once."

Lyra _definitely_ wanted to know that story — for one thing, why would Lily ever have _needed_ to temporarily disembody Sirius's soul? And for another, how had she done it without permanently killing him? That was, like, _mastery_-level necromancy shite. And Sirius had just _let her_? And he _still_ claimed he didn't like her? Normal people were fucking weird.

Persephone smiled. "No. Let's just get this bloody mess off of you, and you can go right back home." She tugged at the silver threads, apparently as gently as she'd pulled Harry's soul from his body, turning him around as she carefully unwrapped the shroud. The threads dissipated into nothingness as she did so, bundling the rotten pieces of Not-Professor Riddle's soul into a neat little ball. It only took a few seconds — less than a minute passed, Lyra thought, before she was guiding Harry's soul back into his body.

"_Woah_. That was..._really_ weird."

"Feel any different?" Lyra asked.

"Er...maybe a bit lighter. You know, like a weight off your shoulders? Though, that might just be knowing I'm not going to have any more bloody nightmares, now."

"Yeah," Sirius said, sniggering slightly, "but now you have to admit you're really just sleeping with Blaise because you like sleeping with Blaise."

"Blaise? Girlfriend?"

"Er, boyfriend." (James seemed vaguely uncomfortable at that, which was bloody _weird_.)

"Come on," Sirius suggested, herding James and Harry away from Lily, Lyra, and Death. "We were going to catch up."

"Er, right. Um... Thanks, ah... What do I...?"

"Call Persephone?" Lyra guessed. "She does have about a _thousand_ names, just pick one."

"That seems kind of...disrespectful," Harry hissed under his breath, as though that would stop Kore hearing him being all awkward. "No offence, Lyra, but I'm pretty sure I can't get away with treating goddesses like normal people."

"_Aunt_ is the usual form of address for a godparent," Lily informed him.

Kore didn't actually object to that (which was also bloody _weird_), but when Harry only grew _more awkward_ Sirius took pity on him. "_Lady_ Persephone, Harry."

"Oh, um. Thank you, Lady Persephone. Er...if you don't mind..."

"Think nothing of it, child. And yes, you may be excused."

"My Lady," Sirius muttered, before resuming his sheepdog act. "Come on, Jamie, Harry, let's..."

"May I?" Angel asked, drawing Lyra's attention away from the wizards edging toward the trees. She was giving the ball of corrupted soul fragments a very pointed look.

Persephone rolled her eyes, tossing the thing to the Avatar of the Dark. "I suppose. He always was one of yours."

Angel caught it with a grin, though she didn't seem quite able to hold it, the ball falling apart into a viscous, semi-intangible thing in her hands, slipping through her fingers in goopy strings. She quickly moved one hand beneath the other to catch them, slowing their inevitable adherence to the law of gravity enough to lift them, giggling as she repeated the process several times.

Was it just Lyra, or did it seem like there was _less_ of the disgusting soul stuff, now, after three or four quick passes? Peering more closely at the substance she decided, no, it wasn't disappearing, it was just...changing, somehow. Becoming lighter, less _drippy_ — sublimating, maybe, to form a sort of...cloud, or _miasma_ (she still got that same sense of corruption and ruin from it) suspended in magic in the hands of the Dark.

"What are you _doing_?"

"Mmm, lunch?"

"_What_? You're actually going to _eat_ that? That's disgusting!"

Angel gave her a rather annoyed, confused sort of _look_. "Hypocritical much?" she said, obviously thinking Lyra's objection was to the whole _consuming souls_ thing, which she was right, none of the Blacks had any room to judge on that front. Yule was basically the same thing, albeit with a soul rendered down by the House Magics to more-or-less just...energy.

Lyra had participated in the ritual death and cannibalistic consumption of five muggles' souls before she left to come here, and yes, it would be hypocritical in the extreme to claim she hadn't really, _really_ enjoyed it. She hadn't really realised until sometime around Imbolc, but she kind of missed it. Getting the Dark to bless the Essence of Shadows before she'd started subsuming it last Yule had been overwhelmingly more of a rush in the short term, but it wasn't really the same sort of year-long boost as the Family ritual.

Of course, she'd fallen into Madness a few weeks later and hadn't _really_ come _down _since, what with Walpurgis and playing off Siri over the summer, and then starting to come into her power. Obviously there were still times like coming back to school when she was _really_ up, but she was starting to think that just channelling a _lot_ more magic all the time was making _normal_ a higher baseline than it used to be. Anyway, she hadn't really gotten the same sense that she was starting to _drag _since spring, but if she thought about it, there was a definite awareness that she _could_ be a little faster, a little sharper — _if_ she'd done the ritual like she was meant to. (Not that it was an option, with the Family Magic fucking shattered.)

But it wasn't actually the idea of subsuming of soul-energy that she was objecting to.

"It's all _gross_ and _rotted_, I can smell it from here." Like eating fucking _lutefisk_ or some shite, just, _ew_. Not to mention, they were just _pieces_ of a soul, which seemed (somehow) subtly more _wrong_ than just subsuming a soul. Like chopping off someone's arm to eat, but letting them live.

Lily laughed at her.

"_What_?"

"Soul fragments don't _rot_, Lyra," Persephone explained, also sounding slightly amused behind her patient tone. "Tom Riddle is very much a creature of corruption and domination. It is hardly surprising that you find his essence repulsive."

"He's also kind of orderly, or was before your little pet got to him," Angel remarked, tipping her head toward Lily. "And Eris fucking hates him for enthralling Bella. I bet that bleeds over a bit. If you think any of that means _I_ don't like him, though, your understanding of the Dark is _seriously_ flawed." _That_ was directed toward Lyra.

She didn't _think_ her understanding of the Dark was flawed, or at least not _that_ flawed, she knew Angel _would_ like bastards like Not-Professor Riddle and Cygnus and Bella, she'd just never realised how..._unpleasant_ Riddle's soul would be. Especially since she _liked_ being around Angel, and she seriously doubted there was less inclination to subjugate people in _her_ soul.

Her confusion and uncertainty must have shown on her face (or else she'd just said something in one of the neighboring timelines Angel could apparently perceive), because the Avatar added, "Don't be all pathetic, now. I like you, too. Just, in a more chaos and conflict and impulsive madness way. Like I liked Lily in an infernal, deceptive way. Kind of. Sometimes."

"You say the _sweetest_ things," Lily said drily.

Angel glared at her over the growing cloud of Not-Professor Riddle. "You called the _Light_, _while I was possessing you_. That _hurt!_ And you always were too ambivalent for my tastes, anyway. Tom, on the other hand, knew _exactly_ who and what he was, and he embraced my presence in his soul in a way _vanishingly_ few mortals ever have. And even if _he_ didn't quite encompass everything I am, either, he shaped Bella into the beautiful, deadly thing she is, and she's _much_ closer. If she weren't so bloody _independent-minded_, I might actually try to poach her from Eris."

She paused, apparently finished with whatever she'd been doing to the fragments of Riddle's soul, examining the small cloud of moody vapour from multiple angles. It appeared, Lyra thought, to be trying to escape her hold, tendrils of it reaching out in ways that weren't really very cloud-like at all. "Did you...put him back together?" Lyra asked, fascinated. She'd never really looked into soul magic much, beyond a few techniques that were useful in cursebreaking (and she'd hardly ever practiced those). She had a suspicion this wasn't the sort of magic humans could really do at all, but that didn't mean it wasn't _really fucking neat_.

"Yep! And strengthened the connection between this half of him and the half still wandering around as a wraith. Or, well, I guess he's got a golem, now, but, whatever." She brought the cloud closer to herself, breathing it in like a fucking dementor.

It was weird, Lyra wouldn't really have expected a _cloud_ to be able to express fear, but the way it had twisted, apparently trying to resist being inhaled, had a distinctly _panicked_ air about it. Did it actually understand what was going on, somehow? "Is — was — that thing actually conscious?"

"Oh, he still is!" Angel said, grinning cheerfully. "I can't start integrating him while he's still tied to this plane. Or, well, I _could_, but only the part of him I'm holding. If I _wait_, I get a second marshmallow."

"Er...what?"

"It's a metaphor." Well _no fucking shite_, Lyra just didn't get the bloody reference! "When you finally break his anchors and his hold on his body, the rest of him will be drawn to me as well, and then he'll be all mine, part of me forever. Or," she nodded to Persephone, "as forever as _I'll_ get to experience. Oh! Before I forget, _Kallisti_, I was looking for you because Sarah wants to talk to you about her ghost problem."

Lily scowled at her use of her pet name for Death. (Still fucking _weird_.) "You mean the fact that you keep murdering people in her house?"

"No, I'm pretty sure it's the ghosts she cares about," she said dismissively, turning back to Kore. "She wants you to let her exorcise them. Please don't? They're part of an experiment."

"You're...experimenting on ghosts? What are you _doing_ with them?" Lily asked, sounding intrigued rather in spite of herself.

"Oh, _now_ you've done it." Persephone rolled her eyes. "This is supposed to be a party, Angel. And while I don't approve of metamorphs _refusing to die_, I also don't approve of you killing people _early_ just so you can torture their ghosts for fun."

"_Research!_" Angel insisted.

"You know you could just _ask_ about how ghosts work," Death pointed out. "It's not like it's a big fundamental _that would be telling_ sort of secret."

"Yes, but if you just give me the answers, I'll never really _learn_ anything," Angel said, _very_ smugly.

Kore groaned. "Where's... Did you say 'Sarah'? Bloody metamorphs always changing their names..."

Angel ruffled Lyra's hair in farewell before skipping the two steps to the goddess and linking their arms together. "I know right? It's just _ridiculous_! Especially since she always uses names that are so bloody _similar_." Rather than pull Persephone into the Shadows, she kept skipping, dragging her along by the elbow.

Lily, who stayed with Lyra, rolled her eyes. "Silly goose."

Lyra failed to hold in a snigger. "Kore or Angel?"

"Er...both? Honestly, I still find it kind of _weird_ how human they can be, these powerful, fundamental forces of the Universe. And I wanted to know what she was trying to do with the ghosts, too!"

"Can't you just remember it?"

"Not really, no. Ghosts are just impressions in local magic, they don't really die. And the Dark is a _lot_ bigger than me. Time and space don't mean _that_ much from my side of things, but I'm not fully assimilated myself, so they do still apply in a way they don't for the Dead in general. Things that happen further away from my own entry into Death are more _remote_ — harder to access. And Angel belongs to the Dark, like that version of Riddle now belongs to her. _The Dark_ isn't going to die probably until the last conscious being dies, it's pretty fucking fundamental to sapient life itself. But that's _very_ far away, it might take the rest of your lifetime _and_ your children's for me to reach it."

Oh. _Neat_. Wait, "_Children_? Who the hell ever said I would be _having children_?"

"Er...your wife? I might not be able to see _your_ memories, but a century or so isn't really _that_ far."

Well, that was just _disconcerting as hell_, was what that was. "How far _is_ far?" she asked, deliberately changing the subject away from the children she might or might not have, even if _wife_ implied _she_ didn't have to actually _be pregnant_, and there was _obviously_ going to be blood alchemy involved, and— Wait, _WIFE? I wasn't planning on getting married, either!_ Though, she guessed it wouldn't be so bad, binding herself to Maïa. Their Houses were already practically joined, if in a rather less equal way than marriage implied, and Maïa was rarely boring, so... She _almost_ asked something along the lines of, why would we bother making it official, but hesitated — talking about her own future just smacked of _fate_ in a way that made Lyra _very uncomfortable_ — and decided to continue changing the subject instead. "I mean, you can't by any chance tell me how the Black Family Magic came about, can you? See, Sirius and my elf, Cherri, kind of _broke_ the fucking thing, I've been trying to fix it all year. Or, well, I've kind of been distracted a lot, but I've been _planning_ on trying to fix it all year."

"Er...I definitely can't tell you _tonight_. A couple millennia isn't like, _last conscious being dies_ far away, but it's not exactly nearby, either. And the _answer_ would probably take longer to explain than we really have. I mean, aren't _most_ Family Magics built up over centuries? And the Blacks were into more esoteric shite than most Houses even _before_ they dedicated themselves to the Dark, their Family magic is bound to be more complex."

Lyra sighed. "Yeah, I figured out _that_ much, at least. Or, well, Theo recently mentioned that the wards on Ancient House kind of menace him whenever he's there unsupervised, and I don't _think_ most House Magics are animate enough to do that sort of thing independently. And that's just one fragment of the Family Magic."

"Wait, really? Oh, that's _so cool_. Kind of weird none of the Blacks in the last few centuries really understood how their own Family Magic worked, but I guess I can't _really_ blame them. I mean, I never made a point of getting to know the Potter Family Magic, it was always just kind of there in the background."

"I _know_! It's really fucking annoying, honestly! I've been working my way back through the grimoires, but kind of a lot of shite was lost when the House was razed before the Covenant, and everything we still have from before the accretion effects became really _obvious_ is missing all sorts of details that would've been common knowledge at the time, probably, but no one does fucking _coven magic_, anymore! And it's not like they were really _studying_ the process anyway, so what they _did_ record isn't necessarily useful."

"So, wait...you're just trying to fix it? Replicate the original process and put the pieces back together like they grew up from the beginning?"

"Well...yeah? What else would I do?"

Lily's spirit shrugged. "I don't know, build something completely new? I'm sure you could find some way to incorporate the more conscious fragments to maintain _some_ continuity, but that's got to be easier than trying to knit the old pieces back together. It's never going to be the same, anyway."

Well, yeah, she knew that. There wouldn't be a new Covenant, for one thing, but she _had_ been in a sort of _fixing_ mindset, as far as she could. Looking back on why she'd originally thought that was the way to go, she realised she'd decided that it would be easier to fix than replace back when she'd first arrived and realised what Sirius had done. There _was_ Black Family Magic before the Covenant, Sirius's actions hadn't really _destroyed it completely_, just put a few major fractures in it. But then Cherri had shattered it with the shock of her re-orienting it away from Sirius, and she'd realised that the blood wards were strangling the individual shards, so she'd had to break _them_, and yeah, at this point, it might actually be easier to start over.

Not that she had _any_ idea how to do that, but it would mean she could stop researching thousand-year-old ritual practices and fighting her natural inclination to _break all of the things_ rather than restore order to them. (She couldn't even conceptualise her attempt to fix the Family Magic as _restoring its autonomy_.) That last bit was probably a major part of the reason she'd been having so much trouble actually _focusing_ on the project, because she suddenly felt _much_ more enthusiastic about the whole thing.

"Has anyone ever told you you're a fucking genius, Evans?!"

Lily's spirit actually looked slightly taken aback for a second. "Not that enthusiastically, for sure."

"No, seriously, that's a great idea! I have no idea how I'd do it, because the only shortcut I know for creating that sort of complex magical construct is human sacrifice, and Sirius _definitely_ wouldn't go for it—" She was going to have had to find some way to deal with that, anyway, given the old traditions of the House. (She _had_ managed to figure out that they'd been making sacrifices long before they'd dedicated themselves to the Dark). "—and grafting together a bunch of separate semi-animate ward schemes and integrating them into a single entity like they _should_ be is something I've never even heard of anyone _trying _to do—" She was pretty fucking certain Ciardha would tell her it was impossible, actually, like trying to cut a property out of one Family and integrate its place-bound magics into an existing Family without restructuring both ward-schemes completely, which with wards as developed and integrated and _concretic _as the various Black properties, would completely destroy them. Not that something being _impossible_ had ever stopped her doing it before, but— "Necromancy!"

"What?"

"Well, technically it wouldn't be, but soul magic, or, obviously the ward-shards don't actually have _souls_, but—" Unless they _did_...? What even _was_ a soul, really? "—the wardcrafting equivalent — actually, like what Angel just did to Not-Professor Riddle — that's the way to integrate them, all the pieces — I just need to design a ward— Or, well—"

"Oh! Right! Okay, I get it. But would a ward be able to _do_ something like that? I mean, it would have to be able to kind of subsume the extant pieces, right?"

"Well, no, not a _new_ ward, I was originally thinking some sort of septarian bridging to bind them together, but that won't work — but the elements to do something like _this_ are already there, I just need to pick one of the shards and bolster it enough that it can overtake the others, and...facilitate contact between them _somehow_—" And also between it and herself — all of the shards _recognised_ her, but it wouldn't do to have her control-shard gaining enough independence that it could _choose not to_, and, well, it was a _very real possibility_ that she personally didn't have the dominating sort of personality to _force_ it to comply with her will — if she had to center the House on _Bella_ to make this work, she was going to be _livid_... "I don't know, I'd have to figure that out, I don't really know enough about soul magic or what the shards _are_, and how far I can alter them without completely destroying them, but... Evans, this could _work!"_

"It _could_. I mean, I don't know all that much about wardcrafting, but I did a _lot_ of reading on soul magic, trying to come up with a way to foil the Killing Curse, and obviously that sort of thing is a lot clearer from this side of the Veil, and the difference between _living_ consciousness and _emergent_ consciousness is— Well, I shouldn't really say, because _that would be telling_, but..." She paused for the briefest moment, just long enough for Lyra to notice. "It's a difference of degree, not kind. That's the only hint I can give you, and only because there _are_ other living people around you who already know." _Who?_ "But if you want, I can help you figure it out."

"Wait, what?"

Lily's spirit grinned. "Summon me, bind my spirit to a book or something. I won't remember anything I learned after dying, because those aren't really _my_ memories, but I bet I knew a lot more about soul magic than you when I died, anyway."

_Oh_. Well that was...pretty fucking awesome, _Lily fucking Evans_ just _volunteering_ to help her figure out this mad, impossible problem — out of all the people who'd died in the course of Not-Professor Riddle's stupid war, she _was_ the one Lyra thought had sounded most interesting. But on the other hand... "Didn't Kore keep you around because she likes your company?" Annoying Persephone by stealing her favourite pet was _probably_ a bad idea...

"I'm informed that I would still be hers. See, the thing about summoning spirits is, it's only ever really _Death_ you're talking to. Death limiting itself to the memories and personality of a single individual, but still Death. I'm not _entirely_ independent of Kallisti any more than you're independent of Eris. So, I'm pretty sure she'll still be able to talk to me if she wants to. Just, might be a bit awkward, since I won't remember everything that happened after dying. Though, it's not like that stopped her from dropping in on me occasionally when I was actually _alive_, so. Yeah, she's fine with it."

"Oh. Well, then yes, _obviously_. Though it'll probably have to wait until Yule — I'm going to have to figure out how to bind you in some form you can still communicate with me which, yeah, there _are_ rituals for that, just, my knowledge of necromancy pretty much taps out at _spill some blood and demand the presence of a spirit three times to talk to them_." And she _did_ kind of have a Triwizard Tournament to deal with, in the meanwhile.

"And prepare a vessel. Something like that diary of Riddle's would be good, though I'm pretty sure he was actually using glamours to facilitate his half of conversations. I'm not a good enough mind mage for that."

"Eh, that's fine. I'm sure I can figure something out." There were probably already solutions to _that_ problem out there, as well. Actually, Theo might be able to point her in the right direction. For all she had more experience just kind of existing alongside the Powers, he _was_ a much bigger high magic nerd than she was. She didn't really _do_ rituals, other than this and the Unbinding. (And Yule, obviously, until last year.) If she and Eris wanted something from one of the other Aspects, they just _asked_. Like, _directly_. But she _knew_ that was mostly what Theo had been looking at in the Black library. She made a mental note to ask him, probably tomorrow — Witnesses tended to be a bit _absent_ for a few hours even after the Revel concluded.

Lily grinned again. "Oh, you will. Now, though, I'd kind of like to go catch up with my son a bit, before Jamie and Sirius fill his head with too much _absolute nonsense_."

Right, yeah, probably a good idea. "Before you go, can you summon Cygnus for me?" she asked. She'd rather not re-open the cut she'd made earlier if she didn't need to. Especially since she didn't care to claim shared blood with the rapist bastard. And she hadn't missed that _Lily_ was the one who'd summoned _Sirius_ out of the Dance. Compared to _that_, calling a specific _spirit_ was nothing. It was practically the whole _point_ of the ritual. "Mocking him for being dead and impotent sounds like a _great_ way to spend the rest of the ritual."

Honestly, why Sirius _didn't_ want to see his dead parents, Lyra would _never_ understand.

Lily rolled her eyes. "You're ridiculous, you know that, right?"

"Please?"

The witch didn't really answer, her form simply receding toward the boys, who had established themselves around the edge of the clearing nearly out of sight, but as it did, another familiar spirit shimmered into existence, scowling down at her as though itching to take a swing.

He seemed...smaller, than she remembered. Older. Much like Ciardha had, when she and Eris had peeked in on her old universe that one time, really. Again, it was probably just because she was bigger now than she had been the last time she saw him — or at least more powerful, and significantly less human, even if she wasn't much _taller_ — but it still kind of took her aback. The way he sneered at her, though, like she was too stupid to just fucking _stay down_ (and not trying to make the point that he couldn't _make _her) — that was _exactly_ the same as it always had been.

She gave him a sharp grin as he opened his mouth, undoubtedly to say something degrading. Her apparent confidence caused him to hesitate, almost-but-not-quite imperceptibly, which was just..._satisfying_ in a way she couldn't really describe. And she hadn't even started in on him, yet.

Her grin pulled wider, almost enough to hurt. This was going to be _fun_.

* * *

_So, Death basically considers human life to be the **best** soap opera/telenovela/drama. That's a thing._

_And yes, Angel **did** compare waiting patiently to consume the **entire** soul of a person she likes to the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment. I find this hilarious._

_I completely failed to take notes while proofing this chapter, so that's pretty much all I've got. —Leigha_

_Personally, I'll never cease to find it amusing that, when Lyra learns she'll be marrying a woman eventually, her immediate assumption is that it's Hermione. Because, who else? (Silly girl, you're fourteen, honestly...) —Lysandra_

_We're finally done with Samhain! Yay! —Leigha_

_We don't really have a buffer anymore, future chapters will come as we have them. —Lysandra_


	30. Harry's Got a Girlfriend!

"Do you think I should ask?" Harry asked Lyra, for the third time in ten minutes.

"Do you want _me_ to ask? Is that why you keep asking me instead of just _doing_ it?"

"Would you?" he asked, shooting yet another look at Krum, Delacour, and the two newly-selected Champions — Ingrid Hannasdottir from Durmstrang and Artémisia Cæciné from Beauxbatons. "I don't like to interrupt..."

Lyra was actually pretty sure Harry just didn't want to know the answer to his question, which was whether Fleur or Cæciné (Harry called her "Arte", which was weird, how would they have met?) knew whether Gabbie was going to be allowed to stay at Hogwarts for the duration of the tournament, just in case it was a _no_. (Well, that and he didn't speak French.) _She_ was pretty sure the answer was _yes_, because how exactly were they going to stop Gabbie from just flying back up here again if they dragged her home (or, more intelligently, flooing up to the coast, flying across the Channel, and then flooing to Hogsmeade)? Granted, Lyra hadn't seen the little veela all day either, but she hadn't really been looking for her. She assumed she was confined to the Beauxbatons carriage while her father tried to convince her to go home and _stay home_, but she also assumed that wouldn't last long. Keeping a veela locked up was kind of torture, apparently.

Harry had explained in excruciating detail the course of the hours they'd spent getting to know each other yesterday, with an enthusiasm that had prompted her to ask Blaise whether he'd been enthralled by the allure. (No, according to Blaise, who found Harry's apparent garden-variety crush to be as adorable as Lyra found it annoying.) But that was only relevant insofar as he'd only _met_ Gabrielle in the first place because she'd gone out to take a nap on the roof because the curtains on Lyra's four-poster had been too confining.

She rolled her eyes at him, but before she could ask Gabbie's sister how long she was grounded for, Zee swept up to the podium someone had conjured at the front of the room. "If I might have your attention, please?" she said — in French, of course (Harry was the only person here who _didn't_ speak it, and he'd said something about needing the practice, because he wouldn't learn French _because it was the bloody international language_, but he _would_ learn it _because Gabrielle_) — waving them toward a semicircle of plain, straight-backed chairs arranged before herself, obviously intended for the six of them.

The heads of the schools and the other judges had conjured seats for themselves along the walls — seats with various degrees of complexity (Karkaroff had backed his intricately-carved wooden monstrosity with what appeared to be ermine) and unnecessary gilt (Maxime's, though that _might_ be a veiled critique of the Hogwarts decor) and overly-stuffed velvet cushions (which didn't make Dumbledore look any more comfortable). If she didn't know better, she'd say they were trying to out-do one another. "Slytherin" had decided to play along, creating an exact replica of the Slytherin Seat in the Wizengamot, though Cassie was leaning against a wall, all fidgety and anxious — Cæciné was only fifteen, which Cassie would probably be all edgy about until she managed to demonstrate that she wasn't a helpless little kid. (Which was kind of silly, the Cæcinés had a reputation for badassery kind of like the Blacks', except _light_, but Cassie had been _awfully_ stubborn about _Lyra_ being a child, even after seeing her kill half a dozen giant man-eating spiders with a pointed stick.) Angel's mind mage friend had taken one look at the rest of them and rolled her eyes before conjuring what _had_ to be a muggle chair for herself — it had _wheels_, and _spun_. Though, if they _were_ trying to out-do one another, none of them could quite top Angel just deciding to hover in mid-air as though there _was_ a chair (and an invisible footstool) where there _definitely wasn't one_.

Delacour wasn't there. Lyra hadn't seen _him_ all day, either, which _she_ thought only supported her theory that he was still trying to convince Gabbie to go home. She was pretty sure the fact that Gabbie had been discovered almost twenty-four hours ago and still hadn't caved suggested that she wasn't going to. (As if flying six-hundred miles by herself didn't scream commitment all on its own.) Harry, on the other hand, seemed to be worried that she might be worn down, if her father kept at it long enough...as opposed to digging in her heels the more anyone tried to convince her she should leave. (Which was just silly, hadn't he spent the _entire day_ talking to her? And he hadn't figured that out? Whatever.)

After a bit of shuffling about, Lyra ended up at one end of the arc, Harry between herself and "Arte" — Lyra noticed the little blonde had a Seer's silver eyes, she actually looked a _lot_ like Luna, which was odd — whom he still didn't ask about Gabbie, even though he had _plenty_ of time while they waited for the Durmstrangers to decide which of them got to sit next to Fleur. Or possibly _had_ to sit next to Fleur — Lyra's Nordic wasn't great, but she was pretty sure she caught Ingrid saying something vaguely disparaging about veela. The hooded glare Fleur shot at her behind Krum's back supported that interpretation, anyway.

"Excellent," Zee said, smoothly ignoring the tension at the other end of the line. "Now we've all managed to settle in, and I believe everyone is acquainted...?" Nods, shrugs. "Yes, well then, I believe it is time to discuss the events! As some of you are aware, each of your schools designed three events for this Tournament. The order of these events has been determined by lottery, with the first being one submitted by Durmstrang: a three-way war-game.

"The Champions for each school will choose a team of fifteen — that is, yourselves plus thirteen additional students — who will attempt to complete several objectives to be stated on the morning of the task. I think it is not too much information to tell you that such games often involve defending an object or place, as well as attempting to capture one belonging to the opposing team or teams. The task will take place in the Forest, out on the grounds, on Saturday the twelfth of this month. The area, approximately a quarter of a square kilometer, is marked out with small runestones. If you have any questions about its location, you may ask your headteacher, all of whom were involved in the placing of the markers. This gives you ten days to choose your team, familiarise yourselves with the field of battle, and prepare your strategies. Your progress will be monitored by house elves bearing an adaptation of the omnioculars I understand many of you will have seen at the Quidditch World Cup this year, and projected on screens for the enjoyment of non-participants."

Lyra felt a grin tugging at her lips. _This is going to be so much fun!_

"The second task is one suggested by Hogwarts. It will also be a team event, taking place in Muggle Edinburgh. Each champion will, with the assistance of two companions, attempt to navigate the city and acquire several objects, _without_ endangering the Statute of Secrecy or revealing yourselves to be anything other than foreign muggle tourists." Harry snorted lightly at that, as though he suspected none of the others would be able to manage it, earning him a glare from both Lyra and Cæciné on his other side. "Your companions for this excursion must be students, and _may not_ be members of your team for the War Game, which you may wish to bear in mind when choosing your teams." Well, _that_ would make things more difficult... "The task will be held on the third of December, with house elves similarly monitoring the progress of each group. Three professors, one from each school, will escort the twelve companions on a two-day trip to the city, the weekend of November nineteenth and twentieth, in order to familiarise them with its basic layout, methods of transportation, currency, and the local muggle customs, so you will want to have appointed your companions by that time.

"The third event of the Tournament will not be a task, but rather the Yule Ball, which, as I'm sure you are all aware, is traditionally opened by the Champions. As such, you may wish to secure your escorts in good time to ensure you will be prepared to do so. After some debate, it was decided that the opening dance would be a waltz, for the sake of those who are unfamiliar with traditional ballroom dances. In a concession to certain members of the judges' panel, the Yule Ball will be held on December twenty-fifth. I understand all of our guests are also invited to attend the Festa Morgana on the twenty-first, if you are so inclined. This year's event is a masque, and will be hosted by the Noble House of Malfoy."

Lovely, Cissy was going to be _insufferable_. Probably even more than when she found out that Lyra had terrified her son into pissing himself this morning, questioning him about his role in entering Harry in the Tournament, but that simply couldn't be helped, he was just _such a wimp_. A wimp who had _no idea_ how Harry's name had gotten in that Goblet, or why he'd even thought it was a good idea to hit him with that jinx in the middle of the Great Hall in the first place, which meant someone had probably compelled him to do it, which meant they were _also_ fucking with _Draco_. If Lyra weren't already annoyed with this particular someone over Harry she might not give a shite, but as it was, she found herself even _more_ irritated with them for it.

Harry jabbed her in the side with a sharp finger, giving her a very significant glare, which...she'd kind of forgotten about not flooding the room with magic, _again_. Oops? She _had_ been getting better, what with Éanna and Gin throwing stinging jinxes at her whenever she did it around them, but she _was_, in her defence, _very irritated_ at the moment. And completely unable to do anything about it. She closed her eyes and focused on containing herself as Zee continued.

"The third task, to be held January fourteenth, is designed to test your mettle and ingenuity, and as such you will be provided no details before the day of the event itself." Dragons, probably — Cassie had _definitely_ mentioned fighting dragons, which Harry had wasted no time freaking out about, even before they'd made it down to the Revel. Plus Angel had said something about keeping him alive through the third task, that was probably the most dangerous. "You will be provided details about the next three tasks after the third task is complete." That was...kind of weird, Lyra thought? Why wait? But whatever. "There is also a traditional event known as the Weighing of the Wands which is scheduled for this coming Saturday. It's more a formality than anything, intended to ensure that your primary focus is in good condition before sending you into potentially hazardous situations in which your life may depend on its efficacy. This has not been a true concern since the development of modern wandcrafting, but it is still tradition. Secondary foci will be allowed in a number of events. If you have a habitual second focus and wish a qualified wandmaker to examine it to ensure it is in good working order, I'm sure Master Ollivander will oblige. Your headteachers have agreed to allow several local journalists to attend the event and take photos of the Champions for their publications, though whether you agree to give private interviews is up to you and your families.

"Are there any questions I might address at this time?"

Lyra listened with half an ear as Ingrid asked something about the second task, in Edinburgh, whether they would be allowed to use translation charms — stupid question, of _course_ they would. Zee hadn't said they _couldn't_, so. She'd probably use an aging potion herself, just because, well, she was aware that she looked like a bloody twelve-year-old by muggle standards. She was far more concerned with what tasks might allow a secondary focus, and what the most versatile might be — _she_, obviously, would be using her knife, and there was no way in hell she was letting Ollivander touch it. She might _have_ to let him examine her wand, but that was fine — it was _new_. Her knife was from her own time and moreover it was a temporal copy of _Bella's_ preferred weapon. Not that she still _had_ hers, Lyra didn't think, but if this was the same Master Wandmaker Ollivander she was thinking of — Garrick, she thought his first name was — he was widely known to have a talent for scrying objects and their history. It _probably_ wouldn't be a good idea to let him see the things that knife, hers _or_ Bella's, had seen.

Harry, on the other hand, didn't know how to use a knife. He didn't have a secondary focus at all, so far as Lyra knew. Ideally she'd say he should get a second wand, mind mages were cheaters when it came to the divided focus trick you needed to cast two distinct spells simultaneously, but learning to use it properly would take a while. It would probably be better to outfit him with one of the more automatic defensive artefacts in the Vault — she'd have to pop down to London and see what she could find. She _vaguely_ recalled Uncle Danny having a ring with a _very_ comprehensive suite of active shielding enchantments on it. Might be a bit of a drain, if he had to use it too much, but it would definitely stand up to dragonfire — this _was_ the same Eridanus whose dragon-hunting tent they'd commandeered for the World Cup, he'd made her use it the one time she'd managed to convince him to take her with him on a hunt, just to be safe (which of course she had taken as permission to not even try to stay out of the way, which was why she'd only managed to convince him to take her along _once_). But she wasn't sure what would have happened to it when he died, which was...bloody ages ago, in this universe. And on the other hand, it might be better to give him something that had some offensive functions as well. Staves were pretty easy to get used to, and there was a lot to be said for the ability to whack things with a six-foot-long stick. Or... "Can a broom count as a secondary focus?"

Zee glared at her for asking a good, legitimate question. Brooms were, generally speaking, _not_ considered secondary foci — though they did, in fact, function exactly like one, from a technical perspective. And Harry was a _damn_ good flier, if he could have a broom that could give him a _massive_ advantage in evading or attacking an opponent. Up to and including a bloody dragon. "I will confer with the judges and let you know. Any other questions?"

It seemed there were none. A few of the other champions — Krum, Fleur, and Harry — gave her a couple of odd looks, probably trying to figure why she would want a _broom_ as a secondary focus, but after a moment the meeting was declared to be concluded, and they were dismissed. Harry hovered indecisively as the Beauxbatons Champions made to leave.

_Oh, for fuck's sake!_ "Hey, Delacour! Did your dear papa decide whether Gabbie gets to stay here yet? I'm asking for a friend."

Fleur fixed her with a rather haughty glare, which softened slightly as she realised that Harry was still there, too, being all awkward and hopeful.

"It's just, um, I was hoping I...might be able to see her?" he mumbled. "It's, well, I know it's none of my business, just, I thought we really hit it off, and—"

"_You_ are the British boy she says is perfectly normal and nice and charming, and has been holding up as an example of why Papa should allow her to stay?"

"Er...am I?"

"Probably. How many Brits has she actually met?" Lyra pointed out.

"Well, it could be Blaise, he's much more charming than I am..."

Something in that response must have been endearing to the veela, because she softened at once. "No. Papa has not convinced her to go home. She has been told that she must stay in our Carriage, for her safety. _But_, Papa has not said that she may not have visitors."

Harry perked up at once. "Really?"

His surprise was echoed by Cæciné, though hers was of a much more suspicious tone. "I seem to recall _Madame_ saying that we may not bring Hogwarts students into the Carriage."

"What _Madame_ does not know will not hurt us, and you have seen how very sad Gabrielle has been."

Cæciné's eyes tipped toward the ceiling, ever so briefly. "_Everyone_ has seen _how very sad_ Gabbie is. It is _impossible to miss_ how very sad she is!"

Lyra barely managed not to snigger. Apparently the little veela was making everyone around her just as miserable as she was.

"So, you agree we should bring Potter back with us to cheer her up a bit."

"_Ugh_, I suppose... Come on, Potter."

"Oh! Right now? Um, Lyra, could you..."

This time, she completely failed not to snigger. "Yes, yes, if Blaise asks, I'll tell him you're off snogging your new girlfriend."

Harry went positively _scarlet,_ which was even funnier than his surprised delight. "You're not funny, Lyra!"

"I'm fucking hilarious," she informed him, sweeping past the three of them. "And also late to meet Maïa, so have fun. Don't do anything Blaise wouldn't do!" she called back over her shoulder. From the way the French girls giggled, Harry went all red and stuttery again. _Tee hee._

* * *

_Now that Samhain is done, we're going back to posting scene-by-scene. We actually have a small buffer atm, so you'll get a couple more updates over the next week before we catch up. After that, posts will come as we finish them. _

_Remember Leigha mentioning that a throwaway line in the Revel inspired her to come up with a whole new story where Sirius impulsively turns himself into a girl and accidentally fucks up the entire war? Yeah, there's like, almost a hundred thousand words in that, and she's about to post it tonight. I believe it will be called "The Lady of New Avalon", but she's currently only posting it on AO3. Her user name there is PseudoLeigha. It is amusing, have funsies._

_—Lysandra_


	31. Immovable Object

_How do I keep letting myself get talked into these things?_ Severus wondered, glaring at the furious teenage veela on the sofa opposite him. The furious, _stubborn_ teenage veela. He could see why Régis had asked him to speak to her, to try to impress upon her how very dangerous it was for her to be here, as an objective observer — attempting to argue with her was like arguing with a bloody _wall_ and kicking a puppy. _Simultaneously_.

It didn't help, really, that his spoken French was abysmal, and her English barely passable. Her father was facilitating the conversation by translating — directly, rather than using a charm, because they gave his little princess a headache — and he kept moderating Severus's _stronger_ language. As though he hadn't meant to tell the featherbrained child that her being raped was a very real possibility, as was the fact that _literally every Briton_ would hold _her_ responsible for assaulting one of _their_ citizens with her evil dark magic — nevermind that it wasn't evil and veela magic was by definition _light_ — if (or more likely _when_) she was.

He truly had not intended to involve himself in this quickly developing fledgling veela _fiasco_. When Bellatrix had tracked him down last night and tried to talk him into helping Gabrielle convince her father to let her _stay_, he had given her a firm _no_. Allowing a veela with incomplete mastery of her magic to stay at Hogwarts posed a danger to both the girl _and_ the student population at large. There _used _to be a mind magic class here, or so Severus had heard (from Shirazi/Flamel/Salazar-_fucking_-Slytherin), but that was decades before _he_ had started school. He could list the number of students enrolled _today_ who were even passingly familiar with occlumency on... Well, since Zabini and Potter had apparently started teaching all of their circle (including Granger, Finch-Fletchley, the Weasley girl, _and_ Campbell), he probably couldn't count them on two hands any longer, but there still weren't _many_. He didn't doubt that she _would_ do everything in her power to avoid any _unfortunate incidents_, but she was a child, and the slightest slip could have _catastrophic_ effects.

He would _inevitably_ be tasked with resolving some issue related to such an accident, he just knew it.

And he had _quite_ enough other guests to worry about, from the incredibly unnerving Avatar of the Dark and the _terrifyingly_ powerful mind mage keeping her in check (and Cassie's _very obvious_ desire to cut their fucking heads off whenever they happened to be in the same room) to the Irish muggle delegation and their guards — he did rather enjoy Síomha but her presence alone was _more_ than enough to put the Headmaster on edge — to Igor _bloody_ Karkaroff. Not that he had any problem with his claim to have been spying on the Death Eaters since they were the Knights of Walpurgis, but Karkaroff _clearly_ didn't believe that _Severus_ had long-since abandoned his loyalty to the Dark Lord.

To be fair, when they had met, Severus had been an angry, stupid teenager, and fully committed to the Cause, despite the circumstances of his recruitment. He liked to think he'd matured a bit since then. But in any case, all of the foreigners — both the Durmstrangers _and _the Beauxbatonnais — were treating him with what he considered to be an unwonted level of suspicion. Which was annoying because it interfered with his investigating, in the few free hours he had (taking on apprentices to lighten his workload _barely_ reduced it to the level it had been before the student population boom of 1993), who the _fuck_ had entered Harry Potter in this thrice-cursed Tournament, and moreover, _why_?

He'd had Black in his office for the _second_ time in two months this afternoon, begging him to keep an ear to the ground, as though he hadn't already been doing so. It was _not_ reassuring in the _least_ to discover that Potter's blood had been used to enter him, even if Bellatrix _had_ made a point of destroying any samples their mysterious enemy might still have held and beating it into Potter's head that he was a _fucking moron_ for allowing his blood to be taken in the first place.

It _was_ somewhat reassuring they hadn't otherwise harmed him with it, at least not in any way _Lily and Persephone_ had thought to mention, while they were standing around chatting at the Revel like it was bloody _tea time_ and reversing bloody soul magic accidents like it was _nothing_. (Severus had never before regretted his decision to avoid the ritual — it wasn't the same without Lily, and he preferred _not_ to risk the possibility of being confronted by the spirits of the innocents he had killed, but he wished he had gone last night, just to see her again.) The only _pleasant_ part of his meeting with Black had been receiving an answer, _finally_, to the question of why and how Potter had been invading the Dark Lord's dreams. And assurances, of course, that the problem had been taken care of — by someone _other than Severus_, for once in his life!

Well, that and the bit where the dog had admitted that Lily had seemed perfectly comfortable being dead — if noticeably _less_ dead than _most_ of the Dead, which was not surprising in the least — and she and Potter (James) hadn't had a civil word to say to each other in the short while Black had observed them together. She and Bellatrix had hit it off (which was also entirely unsurprising), and Potter's meeting with his father had been stilted and awkward because James Potter had never been quite comfortable with homosexuality (completely inexplicable given the tone of his "friendship" with Black), and of course Potter had mentioned Zabini _immediately_. Well, soon after explaining who the junior Bellatrix was and where she had come from, which had gone absolutely predictably as well.

And it hardly helped that Potter had been a Light noble to his core. He'd apparently made an unfortunate comment about veela, and with Potter's thoughts, even in the immediate wake of having been designated as a _fourth_ Triwizard Champion, full of the silver-haired girl sitting before Severus now, he could imagine that had gone over about as well as a lead balloon, to hilarious effect.

_Less_ pleasant aspects of that meeting included Black informing him that no, Lily _wouldn't_ tell Harry who had entered him into the Tournament, because he was more likely to die an untimely death if he knew, and the way he had apparently decided that Severus was his new best friend and/or mind healer, rambling on about how "Jamie" wasn't the man he remembered, anymore — though of course it was Black who had changed (perhaps it was for the best that Severus hadn't attended the ritual, because he had surely changed even more over the past decade than Black) — and how very _lost_ he felt, in the aftermath of their meeting, not so subtly asking for help understanding...how one grew apart from one's former friends, Severus assumed. Much like Nymphadora used to do, back when she'd actually _wanted_ his advice, he had circled around the issue for some time, taking Severus's bland, intentionally boring, _please go away I have actual work to do today_ commentary on his problem and reading advice into it that Severus certainly hadn't intended to convey, as though his words were bloody tea leaves or the like.

And now he was thinking about Dora, which he tried not to do, because her mad scheme to hunt down her aunt and save the bloody world playing Black Cloaks and Warlocks with that demented old fucker she called a mentor, or whatever she thought she was doing, was looking ever more unhinged with every letter she sent to him. She'd been back to visit twice since she'd left at the end of July and both times she'd refused to talk to him about her "mission", but reading between the lines of her correspondence — she would be a _terrible_ spy, as he'd anticipated, the amount of information she let slip unintentionally... — the senior Bellatrix was attempting to organise the Resistance (the loose network of anti-Statutarian groups throughout the ICW) into something resembling...well, an _actual_ resistance movement. Which meant that Dora and Moody were now attempting to infiltrate some of those same groups. Which meant Dora was being exposed far more directly to their rhetoric than she ever had been before, and Severus wasn't _at all_ certain they weren't bringing her around to their perspective. Not that that was a problem, in Severus's view — the Statute was bloody _stupid_ — but it _did_ mean her loyalty to Moody was bound to be tested sooner or later, and he had a horrible, sinking suspicion that she would choose Moody when it was, betray the people she was "meant" to betray, and when she finally realised what she'd done that she would hate herself more than Severus did.

And there was absolutely _nothing_ he could do about it, no more than he could break the binding between Potter and the Goblet of Fire; or quash the tensions already growing between Victor Krum's most rabid fanboys and those of the Boy Who Lived, the Tournament pitting their heroes directly against each other in their obsessive little minds; or ameliorate the resentment the junior Bellatrix had been _deliberately_ encouraging among the NEWT students since her return to Hogwarts.

If actually weaseling her way into NEWT Runes wasn't enough, or invading the apprentices' office wing — Severus had not addressed her intrusion only because Éanna claimed to mind her company less than the other apprentices condescending to talk to him — actually snatching the title of Champion from older, "more qualified" entrants, as she'd been promising to do since the very first night back, had _definitely_ cemented her place as the most hated underclassman among the upperclassmen who hated being shown up by an obnoxious, infuriatingly intelligent _child_. Which was, of course, _most_ of them. And _most_ of them were intelligent enough themselves to realise how incredibly petty and impotent they would look, attempting to retaliate against _her_, so they were left to stew in their anger, taking it out on each other and generally souring the mood of the only classes Severus actually _enjoyed_ teaching.

Add into that the presence of the Queen in the castle, and the fact that she and the Tánaiste were almost _certainly_ hoping to use the Tournament as an opportunity to have a few delicate, backroom discussions about the conflict between their nations — as were Régis and "Sarah Selwyn", though they were far less likely to succeed — or the fact that they'd already found common ground in their disdain for the Statute of Secrecy (both the muggle leaders _and_ the magical diplomats) and were _openly discussing _the points where they felt Gellert Grindelwald _hadn't gone far enough_ in front of _Albus Dumbledore_, and Severus thought he could be forgiven for thinking it a _terrible_ idea to add a volatile teenage veela to the mix, if for no other reason than that she could be the very spark that set off the political powder keg Bellatrix had made of the Castle.

The fact that Bellatrix had offered to look out for her really only made it more likely that she would be, he suspected. She almost certainly only _intended _to use the young veela in her ongoing attempt to antagonise the brain-damaged children who had thought it a good idea to attack her back in June into doing something that she could use as an excuse to pick a fight with them _without_ admitting that she hadn't been obliviated (and also without Cassie kicking her arse for attacking children for no obvious reason), but given Eris's influence affecting everything Bellatrix touched...

Severus could hardly have predicted that the current political upheaval in Britain would be a direct result of Bellatrix fucking with Sybil Trelawney's head. He wasn't about to underestimate her again.

The trouble _was_, Gabrielle Delacour wouldn't _leave_. Her father could, of course, drag her home, but there was no way to make her _stay_ there. Even if the People _were_ inclined to _force_ a child to stay _anywhere_, it was incredibly difficult to prevent a sufficiently motivated mage doing whatever she damn well pleased. Threatening privileges and future plans had had no effect whatsoever, probably because she'd realised that her father could no more enforce those threats than he could bring himself to lock her in her bedroom under wards to prevent her fire-walking right back out again. She knew where she was going now, and Bellatrix had pointed out for her the stupidity of attempting to _fly_ all the way here when there was a perfectly serviceable floo network in both Britain _and_ Aquitania. It would be only too easy for her to just _come back_ if her father failed to convince her that she shouldn't.

And of course, the first five Britons she'd managed to acquaint herself with were Bellatrix, Weasley, Potter, Zabini, and Black, who were _hardly_ representative of the population at large. It was, however, proving difficult to convince Gabrielle Delacour of that very important point, _despite_ her not entirely believing that Bellatrix was even a real person, which implied that she _knew_ Bella Junior couldn't _possibly_ be a good example of normal British attitudes. Severus hadn't managed not to laugh when she'd asked whether "the quiet girl" was actually a living being rather than some sort of complex magical construct, which probably hadn't helped their rapport. For all Bellatrix clearly unnerved her, Gabrielle seemed rather taken with the impossible girl, whom she had described as _perfectly reasonable and rational_ — which might have been the _least_ accurate assessment of Bellatrix's character Severus had ever heard.

"_And anyway, even if the British were as terrible as Papa claims, that is only all the more reason for me to stay!"_

"I cannot _wait_ to hear how you have come to _that_ incredibly naïve, positively _idiotic_ conclusion." Régis translated _idiotic_ as _silly_, which was growing increasingly irksome. "I implied mental deficiency and I meant it, Régis!"

Régis glared at him. "My Gabrielle is not an idiot, and I will not have you say so to her. She is a _child_, and—"

The girl, who had been looking fairly approving — clearly she understood that her father was sticking up for her, even if his English was a bit too quick for her to respond to — grew sullen again at that last phrase, which she clearly must have understood, as she interrupted immediately. "_I am not a child, Papa! I have met the sky—_" Those were the literal words, though Severus had no idea what that actually meant — he assumed it must be an idiom he was unfamiliar with. "—_and_—"

"_And nothing, Gabrielle! Your very insistence that you are not a child only proves you more childish in this instance! Having met the sky only means that you are in more danger here, now, than you would have been two years ago!"_

Oh, probably something about her reaching maturity (or at least pubescence) as a veela, then. Coming into her power, as the British students would put it, and, in the case of veela — and lilin, though Severus understood the People didn't consider themselves to be two different races, more analogous to the distinction between being aligned toward light or dark among humans — going through the magical (and physical) metamorphosis that made them so very dangerous to unsuspecting humans. Those of his students who had ever heard of veela would probably call it _the weird veela sex-magic thing_.

"_That's not fair, Papa!"_ She pouted, pushing her helplessness and anger and resentment at them, all the negativity their "unfairness" inspired.

It was probably unconscious on her part, but it was becoming even more annoying than Régis's constant, deliberate mistranslations. Severus scowled at her. He, like most human mind mages, was capable of refusing to _respond_ to veela mind magic, but he couldn't entirely block her out any more than he could entirely hide his emotional state from the Zabini boy. He _could_, however, magnify and reflect the effect _back_ at her, forcing her to experience her own petulance three-fold — her own mastery of occlumency was not sufficient to keep _him_ out, either. (If the way she projected as she spoke was any indication, veela were probably not overly concerned with blocking each other out.)

She whimpered under the mental assault, fear and confusion entering the chaotic mixture of emotions surging between them. He cut himself off abruptly — it would be cruel to force her to suffer those emotions more intensely. And besides, Régis was already demanding to know what he was doing to his daughter.

Severus ignored him. "The universe does not give a single, solitary _fuck_ about what is or is not fair in your mind, Miss Delacour."

He paused to allow Régis to translate, but interrupted halfway through. "What, precisely, is the point of asking _me _to explicate the dangers posed by your daughter's presence here if you intend to continually soften my language?"

Régis, suitably chastised, translated the sentence properly, vulgarity intact, albeit with a certain tone of unease.

"And I _assure_ you, if you lose your temper like that with any Briton who is _not_ a mind mage, they _will_ take it as an attack — much as you did my reflection of it upon you. They will be afraid and confused, as you were just now, and while I grant you not _all_ of them will lash out in retaliation, many would."

He paused again, but rather than translating, Régis stared at him, slightly horrified. "You did _what_?"

Presumably it was some sort of taboo among the People, exploiting their natural talents to hurt each other in such a way. Severus truly didn't care. "You did not bring me here to be _kind_, Régis. Now, are you going to translate, or not?"

He did, though with an even deeper sense of unease lurking behind his wary eyes.

"I am not a nice man, Régis. I have never claimed to be."

Gabrielle twittered something, fierce orange eyes narrowed bravely to meet his own — not that he needed eye-contact to maintain mental contact with a constantly-projecting empath, but meeting the eyes of a mind mage was almost always meant as a deliberate challenge — and making a valiant attempt to contain herself.

"She can control herself, she says. If she must. But she will not go home, because she— _Really, Gabrielle? That is ridiculous! You cannot—"_

"_I do mean it! Tell him!"_

"Because she wishes to prove to the British, if they are really so fearful as you say, that they needn't be, that she means them no harm, and because how else are they to overcome their prejudices if they never—"

His translation of her ludicrous explanation was interrupted by the door of the sitting room they had commandeered for this conversation opening, two girls, the elder Miss Delacour and her fellow Champion, suddenly realising that they were intruding and hastily apologising — one of them, Severus thought, asking that they not tell their Headmistress that they'd brought a British boy into the carriage, and thank you, we'll go now, goodbye — and a delighted squeal.

"Harry!" Gabrielle bounced off the sofa to embrace the rather startled (but not at all displeased) Potter, before dragging him back to sit with her, to face her father and Severus and their efforts to convince her to leave. "I am so happy you come to visit me! Papa and _Maître_ Snape are so mean! They wish me to return home!"

"Ah... You did know they were going to, though, didn't you? Er. Hi, Professor. Mister Delacour."

"You must say for them it is not dangerous that I stay!" she demanded, projecting a quick series of memories at the boy, bringing him up to speed on the progress of their conversation.

"Oh. Well, um...that's— I don't want you to leave! But...it probably is dangerous, a little. I mean, Professor Snape wouldn't lie about that, and—"

Shock. Betrayal. Heartfelt sorrow. "You want me to go, also! I thought you like me!"

"_No!_ I don't! I really don't! I mean, I do like you! I don't want you to leave! It's just... I don't want you to get hurt, either!" Was that... Was Potter actually projecting memories and emotions _back_ at her?

That was...somewhat impressive, really. Not the _technique_, per se — it was easy enough to broadcast thoughts and memories and emotions for any passing mind mage to hear. Most people did it unconsciously until they began to learn occlumency, in fact. _Black_ did it _deliberately_, which could make it _very_ difficult to hold a conversation with him, completely aside from the issue of Sirius Black simply being an enormous twat in general. But to do so with that degree of fluidity and with a narrow enough focus that Severus had to make an active effort in order to 'overhear' — _that_ was impressive. Almost as impressive as a _thirteen-year-old_ mastering the Patronus charm, that mastery _apparently_ guided by Magic Itself, if the second-hand memories he'd stolen from Zabini were to be believed. (Severus was beginning to suspect that Magic liked Lily's son as much as it had liked _her_.)

In fact, it might be _more_ impressive, given that Potter could only possibly have begun to attempt to communicate thusly _yesterday_. That _was_, Severus was fairly certain, the first time he'd _ever_ spoken to a veela, and apparently he'd managed to intuitively grasp an aspect of their culture most humans, even most mind mages, never did. The only reason _Severus_ was aware of it was Lily's tendency to do very much the same thing despite not being a proper mind mage herself. She had always said it was easier to charm people when you were consciously and actively reciprocating their emotions (or silently urging them to reciprocate yours) — _they call that _empathy_, Sev, you should try it sometime_...

"_Don't be ridiculous, Harry, I'm not going to get hurt! And I'm not going home, either!_"

"They're not lying, though, about some people being racist arses. I mean—" He projected a flash of Draco Malfoy hexing him in the back yesterday, and a slew of cruel and mocking taunts which had been thrown at Granger and Zabini over the years. "And they're not even _scared _of _us_." An image of Bellatrix lying in hospital after being kidnapped and tortured, probably stolen from Zabini, since Potter was busy being "dead" at the time. "They can be _much_ worse if they're scared of you."

Severus was slightly surprised that Potter had responded so easily, despite how Gabrielle had reverted to speaking French — as far as he was aware, Potter's French was even worse than his. He must be interpreting through that mental contact they were using. But it was so smooth and casual, Severus wondered if Potter even noticed.

"_This is the quiet girl?_" she asked, projecting incredulity along with a fuzzy, not-quite-visual impression of Bellatrix. The general _shape_ was correct, and the sense of wild dark magic and raw _power_ was easily recognisable, along with the sense of hollowness that was her presence in the landscape of psychic energy.

"Er, yeah. Lyra? She was ambushed at the end of last term. And, I mean, she's fine — _weirdly_ unbothered about the whole thing, really — but they might do even worse to you if they have the slightest excuse, and even something this would be bad enough — they used the Cruciatus on her!"

Gabrielle's eyes went _very_ wide. "_This is the unblockable torture spell, yes? The one that is like magical backlash times a million?_" Severus nodded. "_And she is _fine_? How can she be?_"

Potter scoffed. "Lyra's _always_ fine," he said, projecting a memory of her smirking at Sirius over the summer, saying, presumably in reference to the Cruciatus, "_But after is even better when you're a little mad. Like, better enough that it's borderline worth it,"_ which might have been the most obviously _Bellatrix-like_ thing Severus had heard her say yet.

"_I still am not entirely convinced she's real._" Potter let out a startled laugh. "_But surely if I am careful, they would have no reason, no_ excuse _to do such a thing to me. And I _can _be careful! I will not leave, and that is final! And Papa, if you make me go home, I will just come back!_"

Régis made a frustrated huff before taking a deep breath, clearly attempting to maintain his calm facade. "_Gabrielle. You _cannot _stay here! I do not say this because I wish to ruin your life, or because I do not wish to see you, but only because I _worry _about you! Think about Mama and Aunt Lise and Aunt Chloé — do you think they are not _also _worried? And they miss you!_"

"_But Fleur is our Champion! Mama and Auntie Lise and Aunt Chloé and Izzie and Laïa and everyone should just come here! In fact, that's a great idea! I'm going to write Mama _right now_!_ Come with me, Harry!" she demanded, hopping to her feet and offering him a hand.

He took it, of course, though he immediately asked, "Where are we going?"

"To write to Mama and Auntie Lise and ask them to come here, too. This is the _best_ idea!"

"Is that the Auntie Lise I'm related to?"

"Yes. She is the _most_ _cool_ aunt. I knew she is your aunt, not _the third cousin of a godparent by marriage_ or what you thought first. You have the same hair," she said, giggling and reaching over to fluff the mess atop Potter's head, as though it wasn't already unruly enough.

"_Sit back down, young lady! This conversation is not over!_"

"_Yes, Papa, it is, because what more is there to say? I am here and I am staying and it will be perfectly fine because British people are not nearly as terrible as you are trying to scare me into thinking they are — look at Harry! He's perfectly nice and charming and clever and even asked if there was a way he could learn to fly like me, which is the complete opposite of the sort of thing you say he should have done!_"

"Potter is a bad example," Severus informed her, attempting to use small words so that she would comprehend his meaning regardless of whether Régis translated his words. "He is hardly representative of the average Magical British attitude toward _anything_, including veela." Though Severus found he wasn't at _all_ surprised that the boy wanted to learn to become a bird. He wondered idly whether he would manage to become an animagus before the end of the school year. He wouldn't, he decided, be surprised about _that_, either.

"_The quiet girl says Harry is the most normal person she knows! And I'm sure she knows a lot of people, so—_"

"You'd be surprised." Severus was quite certain that if she had truly _meant_ that, she _hadn't _been considering casual acquaintances. Potter was certainly more "normal" than Zabini or Granger — or the Weasley girl or her infuriating elder brothers, or Éanna, or Cassie and the wilderfolk, or Nott and the Lovegood girl, or Severus himself (he doubted she would have dragged him off to exterminate inferi with her over the summer if she didn't actually enjoy his company) — but that _really_ wasn't a high bar. Bellatrix simply didn't _associate_ with _normal people_, because _normal people_ were _boring_ (per the senior Bellatrix).

"_It doesn't matter if Harry is a good example of British people or not, I'm not leaving. If it turns out some of them truly are as awful as you say, I will just spend my time with those who are not. Like Harry and Blaise, who are very nice, and also mind mages so I won't hurt them when we have sex._"

...Severus had absolutely _nothing_ to say to that, except perhaps that he hadn't thought it was possible for teenagers to be more obsessed with sex than the ones he was (unfortunately) familiar with, but apparently he had been wrong. "That is _exactly_ the sort of thing one should avoid saying in front of the average British person." Though if she was so _very_ determined to stay, there _was_ some merit in the idea of simply surrounding her with people who were both more open-minded and more resistant to the veela aura than the average British student.

"Er...I didn't get that one," Potter admitted awkwardly. (Presumably, he had more difficulty interpreting her intent into something he could understand when she wasn't speaking directly to him.) "What don't we say to the average British person?"

"It is not important," the little veela said smoothly, even as her father began to lecture her about whether or not she could simply go around deciding that she was going to seduce these British boys she'd barely met, and asking whether she'd even asked them what they thought of her plan. The answer to that, amusingly enough, was, "_Don't be silly, Papa, of course I haven't. I know outsiders get weird when you seduce them too soon. _See_, I know how to deal with British humans just fine!_"

Severus left them to their ridiculous tangential argument, focusing instead on one of his favourite little shadow magic emulating spells, a charm that let one whisper in someone's ear from halfway across the Great Hall — or, if one had surreptitiously tagged one's target with a focusing element, shout at them from a ridiculously oversized carriage on the other side of the grounds, nearly a quarter of a mile away. "_Black!_ Get your arse down here _immediately_!"

All three of the others turned to stare at him.

"Er...I don't think she's spying on us at the moment," Potter pointed out. "She said she was meeting Hermione..."

Oh, then Severus was probably interrupting something. He smirked to himself, casting the charm again. "_Now_, Black!"

"Why, Severus, are you—"

"You know, I can and will make your life hell," a _very_ annoyed Bellatrix interrupted, stepping out of Severus's shadow. (He was quite certain she didn't realise how difficult she was already making his life given the absolute circus she'd made of this bloody Tournament.) He suspected that she was trying to startle him, appearing _directly behind him_ rather than in a dark corner somewhere, but that was _exactly_ the sort of thing he expected from her, and in any case she hadn't yet figured out how to hide her magical presence — he'd felt her there as soon as she crossed the planar boundary. "Your Honour," she added, apparently realising that she wasn't in his office, or indeed in the Castle at all, and surrounded by other people.

"As can I yours. _This_ is _your_ fault," he declared, sneering toward the veela and her captive Potter, who had at some point in the discussion of whether it was a good idea to go seducing British boys, even ones who were mind mages and _just so cute, Papa_, fallen back onto the sofa.

Bellatrix blinked up at him, her confusion far too overly-performed to be genuine. "Er...I don't think so. I mean, I didn't even introduce them, they managed that all on their own."

Potter went _very_ red. "Um—" He stopped to clear his throat as Gabbie paused in her ongoing rant to attend to the English conversation. "I...don't think that's what he meant, Lyra."

From her amused smirk, Severus suspected that Bellatrix was fully aware of that. "Gabbie would've made it here without my help eventually, and why are you even here, Your Honour? You said you weren't going to convince Régis to let her stay."

"I'm _not_. I _was_ attempting to convince her to go home, but the stubborn child insists that I'm simply _being mean_ to convince her that her father is right, when clearly he is, in fact, full of shite, and all British people — _including you_ — are perfectly reasonable—" Bellatrix apparently found that assessment as ridiculous as Severus did, as she seemed to be fighting not to laugh. "—and look, one of her new friends has even come to visit her." The child scowled at him, obviously aware that his scathing imitation was of her, even if she didn't quite understand all of his words. "And as we shall never know how successful her attempt to reach us might have been without your assistance, I do intend to hold you _fully_ responsible for her presence here — which means that, so long as she refuses to leave the school, _you_ are responsible for her safety and wellbeing. _Understood_?"

"Er...yes? I _did_ say last night that I'd look out for her, didn't I?"

"Wait, please, one moment, Severus! I have not agreed that Gabrielle may remain in Britain!"

Severus heaved a put-upon sigh. "At a certain point, Régis, one must concede that teenagers have far more time and energy to devote to flouting any rule placed in their path than we have to enforce them. As we cannot force your daughter to go and remain safely in Aquitania, it is hardly a matter of _allowing_ her to stay. We can but hope to mitigate the _inevitable _consequences of her _incredibly _foolhardy decision." Pity she didn't speak enough English to realise that he was still deriding that decision, even as he _very_ reluctantly supported it, but— Oh, never mind, apparently Bellatrix found it amusing enough to translate, using a sound illusion to replicate a passable imitation of his voice, even if the intonation was slightly off. He glared at her, purely for the sake of form. "_Really_, Miss Black?"

"Nyberg, you know, Durmstrang's G.A. professor? He's a fucking genius. Translating things simultaneously with illusions is _way_ less annoying than constantly having to go back and repeat them," she explained, translating her own words as she spoke, creating an odd foreign echo.

...So it saved her about half a second, was what he was hearing? Ridiculous child.

"_So, does that mean I can stay?_"

Régis glowered at his daughter. "_It means I cannot compel you to go home and stay there._" Gabrielle grinned, joy and triumph noticeably lightening the atmosphere, before Régis crushed it again. "_But if you are to remain here, there will be _conditions_!_"

"_What kind of _conditions_?_" she asked warily.

"_You are not to go anywhere unaccompanied and you must keep up with your own schoolwork—_"

There might have been more conditions, but before he could list them, he was interrupted. "_I don't need a _minder_, Papa! I'm _fourteen_! I can take care of myself!_"

"_If that were true, Gabrielle, I would not be nearly so concerned about your presence here!_"

"He's kind of got a point, kid. I mean, you thought it was a good idea to _fly_ here. _By yourself._ As a _bird_." Bellatrix smirked, still echoing herself in French — or possibly _speaking_ French and echoing herself in English? It was far more difficult to tell than Severus thought it ought to be. Clearly the girl had spent at least part of the summer perfecting her illusions. (He couldn't help but wonder _why_ — he'd have to keep that in mind in attempting to uncover and foil any plots she might be hatching.)

"_You do not get to call me a _kid_, I am not a _child_, we are the _same age_! And you agreed this was a good plan! Whose side are you on?!_"

"I definitely told you you should have used the floo, and it doesn't matter how old you are, if I'm looking out for you I get to call you a kid," Bellatrix said, ignoring the point about her approving of Gabrielle's mad scheme to _come_ to Britain, even if she had quibbles with the method of travel she'd employed.

(Potter rolled his eyes, commenting to no one in particular, "Yeah, she treats _me_ like a kid all the time, too, it's really annoying.")

"_That will not be necessary, Miss Black. I mean no offence, of course, but surely Fleur and the Beauxbatonnais will be more than capable of keeping an eye on Gabrielle._"

Bellatrix shrugged, her eyes flicking over to Severus. "So...am I responsible for Gabbie or not?"

"Yes, you are."

"Severus, may I speak to you for a moment in private?" Régis said firmly, casting a charm to prevent the children eavesdropping on the two of them. "I realise, Severus, that you are trying to help, but Gabrielle is _my_ daughter, and if she insists on remaining here, I will attend to her safety. It is not your responsibility nor that of Miss Black to mind her."

"With all due respect, Régis, Gabrielle is not the only one who may come to harm if she is allowed to roam Hogwarts freely, and it _is_ my responsibility to assure the safety of the racist little shites who attend this school. While I am certain that your elder daughter and any number of Beauxbatons students are perfectly capable of, let us say, _dispatching_ any Briton who might attempt to harm her, it is only too likely that they would be a bit _overzealous_ in their defense of their young friend. Moreover, you might wish to consider how it would look if they were to harm a Hogwarts student in attempting to halt an incident between Gabrielle and an enthralled attacker."

There _was,_ of course, a difference between _actual_ enthrallment in the sense of mental enslavement and the casual effect of a veela's aura on even the most unsuspecting horny teenager, but that was hardly common knowledge among those who had not studied mind magic to some extent. Laypersons tended to use the term to refer to any mind magic interference in their decision making, and law enforcement was little better when it came to distinguishing degrees of influence.

"My countrymen would almost _certainly_ consider any such intervention to be an _additional_ unprovoked attack, on top of being exposed to the allure. _Miss Black_ taking steps to halt such an incident, while still potentially problematic, would be seen less as an attack by Beauxbatons or the People — and with the reputation and standing of her House, she would hardly be impacted by any measures taken to punish or censure her. Certainly not to the degree that any Aquitanian student would be."

A note of doubt crept into Régis voice, but he was clearly not entirely convinced. "Be that as it may, I do not know Miss Black. I have no intention of entrusting the safety of my daughter to a perfect stranger. And who is to say she would not simply be hurt herself, in attempting to intervene? Mister Potter _did_ say that she was very seriously attacked by her fellow students only a few months ago!"

Ah, yes. _That_. "She was, yes. She was ambushed by enemies she underestimated. It is...highly unlikely that they will make another such attempt to harm her, or that such an attempt would be successful, now that she is aware of that particular weakness."

Severus let out a thin sigh, trying to think how best to phrase this. Even if _Bellatrix _weren't more capable now of escaping her captors in such a scenario, and more aware of the potential danger those particular individuals posed if they managed to take her by surprise, _they_ were far less likely to try something like that now that she had publicly demonstrated her abilities, killing Lord Nott at the World Cup and engineering the capture of several of their older cousins and friends of their families. Of course, some of them would see that as only greater provocation, but given that she was _hardly_ subtle about coming into her power and it had become the general explanation for her presence over the summer that she was a bioalchemical clone of the Blackheart, they would have to be positively _suicidal_ to do so.

"And even were it not, should they, or anyone else in the castle, work up the courage to attack Gabrielle or get carried away by hormones and emotions, I am certain Miss Black will have no compunction about slapping them down."

Not that he thought any of the adults or other visitors were _likely_ to attempt to harm the girl, but he was aware of a degree of ill-feeling toward veela in general from several of the apprentices, and even a few of his fellow professors were less than entirely comfortable with their presence — Minerva, for one, and Charity (she'd never really become accustomed to the idea of non-human beings _existing_). Dumbledore had a well-known problem with the People in general, and was always quick to defend good children from good families who made _one_ little mistake (like _Damian_ fucking _Stryke_). Even _Filius_ was unnerved and overly-defensive around them, which seemed slightly absurd given the prejudice _he_ experienced throughout Britain, but such things were hardly _rational_. If any of them were forced to intervene in an incident involving Gabrielle and any human student, they would almost _certainly_ side with the human.

It also was hardly out of the question that, in a _worst_ case scenario, Síomha or Cassie would over-react if they believed that Gabrielle posed an immediate threat to the Irish muggles or another child, respectively — though Cassie, at least, was unlikely to seriously harm the silly girl in the process. Of course, Síomha and Cassie (and indeed most of the adults in the Castle) could still trounce the younger Bellatrix in a fight, but no one had ever accused _either_ Bellatrix of having any sense of self-preservation to speak of. Severus had little doubt she would interpose herself between practically anyone else and _her_ veela, as she had last night declared the girl to be.

(If he weren't absolutely certain that Bellatrix was blind to emotional manipulation, he'd be suspicious of her impulsive decision to extend protection to the girl. As things stood, he was beginning to suspect that she had recognised Gabrielle as something of a kindred spirit — albeit one who hadn't a shred of common sense to help her accomplish mad schemes such as _flying to Hogwarts_.)

"She takes the safety of those she is bound by duty or word to protect a good deal more seriously than she does her own. As such, _I_ shall be holding Miss Black responsible for little Gabrielle's well being _regardless_ of whether you instruct your elder daughter and her friends to attend to her as well."

Régis gave an annoyed huff, clearly not entirely convinced that Severus knew whereof he spoke, but it seemed reminding him that it was _entirely possible_ and even _advantageous_ for more than one person to keep an eye on the stubborn little veela _did_ rather effectively undermine any arguments he might have made against Bellatrix's involvement. After all, there was effectively little difference between Fleur minding her sister while she simply socialised with Bellatrix, and both Fleur and Bellatrix minding the girl. And even if Régis was loath to admit it, Severus _knew_ he had a point about the political optics of Fleur...burning an attempted rapist to a crisp, or some such over-reaction. (Severus had not forgotten her brief outburst on learning that her sister might be missing — presumably _knowing_ that she was in danger and being in a position to do something about it would not encourage her own self-control.)

"Very well," Régis ground out, rather reluctantly, dropping his anti-eavesdropping charms. They were bi-directional, so Severus hadn't been able to keep up with the children's conversation. They seemed to be discussing...how the Castle worked? "_We have decided_," Régis said (interrupting Bellatrix's enthusiastic, "_I might have to talk to the elves, but I'm sure we could do it!_"), "_that Gabrielle may stay_." Gabrielle leapt to her feet to throw herself upon her father in what was perhaps the world's most gratuitously over-excited hug, squealing delightedly. "However," he added firmly, "_you _must _be accompanied by Fleur, Arte, or another mind mage capable of breaking the effect of your magic if you slip, _whenever _you are outside this carriage, understood?_"

"_I understand, Papa_," the girl said, bouncing with excitement. "Harry! I may stay!"

Potter, obviously trying not to laugh under the infectious joy she was spilling all over them, bit his lip. "You don't say?"

"No, I _do_ say! Truth, Papa say I may stay!"

"Yeah, I got—" Potter gave up, chuckling slightly. "Never mind. That's great!"

"_So, does that mean you're not moving up to the Tower, then?_" Bellatrix asked, sounding oddly disappointed, if only slightly. "_Because that would've been a great excuse to ask for a—"_ ...balcony? Was _balcon_ balcony?

Well, that would explain her disappointment, he supposed. _And_ that she would have been planning to ask the elves to do something — probably talk to the Castle for her. Making it obvious that she wanted a balcony seemed a bit more difficult than communicating that there ought to be a wall through the middle of her dormitory with a ward.

It was hardly important, however. "That is a matter for Miss Delacour and her father to discuss," Severus said dismissively. (Which they were, he realised, already doing, arguing again in rapid-fire French.) "I am still holding you responsible for her safety and that of any other student she may encounter, regardless of where she sleeps and whether she is accompanied by her sister or Miss Cæciné or whoever else."

Black made a face at him. "I'm _not_ going to protect any idiot who decides they _just can't help themselves_ and paints a target on their own arse." As though they didn't _already_ have targets on them? "That _completely_ defeats the point of looking out for her in the first place!"

"Do not be ridiculous, Miss Black. You may humiliate them, cause them pain and emotional trauma, even injure them, but you may not permanently or semi-permanently disable them — and if any of Miss Delacour's _other_ protectors attempt to do so, I expect you to prevent their success."

Bellatrix smirked at him. "So, you're actually giving me _permission_ to hurt people? I mean, not that I _need_ your permission, but as long as I don't put them in hospital for, I don't know, longer than a week or so, I won't be in trouble?"

That...wasn't _entirely_ accurate. "Proportional retaliation is unlikely to be punished as severely as it otherwise would be, given the political realities of the situation," he hedged. "But as always, it would be advisable to resolve any conflicts nonviolently whenever possible."

"Yeah, but, when it's _not_...? I mean, it's probably mostly going to be your little baby snakes getting kerb-stomped. Maybe some of the more obnoxious Ars Brittania idiots in Gryffindor and Hufflepuff, too. Or I guess Fleur, if she tries to roast said idiots alive, but."

But Minerva and Pomona weren't nearly as protective of their students as Severus was, and that she might cause an international incident by severely injuring another Champion outside of the bounds of the Tournament was _hardly_ a deterrent. He was almost certain that was what she was thinking. Which implied it was _Severus's_ retaliation she was concerned about, not any official response. That was almost flattering.

He pinched the bridge of his nose, as though failing yet again to ward off the tension headache Bellatrix's company inevitably produced — though in fact he thought he was somewhat ahead in this particular conversation. It _did_ make things easier, knowing that he was ordering her to do something she wanted to do, even if she might object to some of the limitations he imposed. And she _would_ agree to those, if only as a sort of challenge to make the whole exercise more interesting. "I _know_ I am going to regret this, but if they make targets out of themselves, I will refrain from intervening in their defence. _Not_ including anyone who assaults her under the influence of the allure, only the ones who _choose_, entirely of their own volition, to attempt to harm her."

"And I'm supposed to tell the difference...how?"

Severus gave her his nastiest grin. "I suppose you can't. What a shame. You'll just have to treat them all with some degree of care. I have every confidence that you are capable of subduing any student attacker without resorting to spells which cause significant harm to the target."

The girl scowled at him, let out a heavy, overly dramatic _sigh_. "Fine, fine. _Not like they had any problem hurting _me_,_" she muttered, "But _whatever_, I'll just transfigure them into ferrets or drag them into the shadows or something. Zee says normal people hate that, but, I don't think it actually hurts them?"

Severus winced involuntarily. Being pulled under the Dark was _terrifying_...though he had to concede, "No, it is not physically harmful for a human to experience the Shadow Plane — assuming you don't _leave_ them there to be _eaten by a lethifold_ or some equally horrifying fate." That story still amused him, months after first viewing a third-hand memory of the event.

She elbowed Potter, who seemed to be focused far more on the Delacours' conversation, attempting to sort out who was ahead in the argument about Gabrielle's sleeping arrangements. "Why would you tell His Honour I got slightly eaten?"

"Huh?"

Severus ignored their byplay. "Now, if that is agreed, I want your word that you will do everything in your power to protect Miss Delacour and keep her out of trouble for the duration of the Tournament, while adhering to the limitations we've discussed here today."

Bellatrix raised a skeptical eyebrow at that. "You know _everything in my power_ is kind of...a lot, right? And _keep her out of trouble_ is both far too broad and have you _met_ me? Asking me to keep someone out of trouble is like asking me not to _breathe_! I'll give you my word that I will take every reasonable measure that doesn't conflict with prior oaths and agreements or Gabbie's own choices to protect her from physical and magical harm for the duration of the Tournament. Take it or leave it."

"I am _aware_ that _everything in your power_ is _kind of a lot_, yes. I'm placing the safety and wellbeing of a child, the daughter of an international diplomat, in _your _hands. I expect you to protect her as though she were your sister, regardless of her opinion on the matter and generally accepted standards of _reasonability_ in such circumstances. If you have to break causality to do so, I expect you to do it."

Black pouted at him. "_Break causality_? Who do you think I am? _Angel_? I don't even have a time turner anymore! And which is it, protect her like Family, or do everything in my power to keep her safe? Because those two standards are _not_ interchangeable."

"They're not?" Potter asked, having apparently come to a similar conclusion to the one Severus had drawn over the years — that the Blacks were meant to protect their Family above everything else, to the best of their abilities.

The girl sighed, reciting what sounded like a formal lesson she might have been taught as a child. "No, Harry. Protecting the children of the House takes precedence over pretty much everything except protecting the continuation of the House itself when it comes to a serious, immediate threat. Oaths to anyone other than the Lord of the House, your own opinions on the matter, _my_ opinions on the matter — all irrelevant. But it doesn't mean you're not allowed to fuck up and get yourself hurt at all, ever — that's how you _learn_. And most of the time, I let you take care of yourself, which is how you end up doing stupid fucking shite like letting someone steal your fucking blood and enter you in the fucking Tournament in the first place."

Potter scowled at that, thinking very clearly that _I'm pretty sure that wasn't my fault, okay? If you weren't always fucking _insane_, I would know when I should take your insanity seriously, wouldn't I?_

Which...was a point, Severus supposed. Bellatrix was hardly known for her ability to prioritise. When she'd been training his cohort, she'd certainly acted as though _literally everything_ she was teaching them was of equal importance, from the dozens of variations on advanced shield charms that had saved his life countless times, to how to apparate in mid-air (and _not_ plow oneself into the ground on re-entry) in case of the rare event that one was knocked off one's broom in the midst of an aerial battle — a skill he had never once needed to employ outside of training.

Bellatrix was, of course, completely oblivious to their mental wanderings. "_Doing everything in my power_ to keep Gabbie safe, or protecting her to the best of my ability, whatever, is limited by what I'm willing to do, and because I'm _me_, what _she's _willing to _allow_ me to do, and conflicting prior commitments and oaths, but arguably would mean taking measures to prevent her putting herself in a situation where she'd be likely to get hurt at all, even if sheltering her like that isn't exactly helping her in the long run."

Now Severus truly _was_ beginning to develop that familiar Bellatrix-induced headache. The _most_ annoying thing was probably that he didn't _actually_ think she was taking the piss, here. She was just slightly too annoyed and intense to not be genuinely confused, and she was hardly equipped to fake such subtleties. (He wished he could say he couldn't _believe_ he had to define this, but having known the senior Bellatrix, he couldn't really say it surprised him.)

"Protect her to the best of your ability until and unless she manages to stumble into a serious, immediate threat, at which point I expect you to protect her as you would a child of your House, preventing her suffering any lasting injuries from the experience, even if you do allow her to learn a lesson about self-control before you intercede. Do not injure her attackers any more severely than you allow them to injure _her_, or allow any other individuals attempting to defend Miss Delacour to do so." After a brief pause, he added, "Unless refraining from doing so would result in an equal or greater degree of harm to Miss Delacour." That should, he thought, be sufficiently comprehensive instruction. "Do I have your word, or not, Bellatrix?"

She pondered this for a moment, perhaps working through potential iterations of conflicts Gabrielle might become embroiled in, before nodding. "Fine, yes, you have my word." She added a few Welsh-sounding phrases and a hand-gesture he wasn't familiar with, though the shiver of magic on the air suggested that, were she to break her promise, Magic would presumably hold her accountable in some way.

He...hadn't expected that, honestly. Given that he knew she wanted an excuse to pick a fight with anyone who would give her one — and, again, his familiarity with her elder counterpart — he would have been satisfied with the words alone. Before he could say as much, she smirked at the still-arguing Delacours. "_Hey, Gabbie, come here for a second!_"

"_What is it?_" she asked impatiently, flouncing over even as Régis snapped, "_Gabrielle, I was still speaking to you! You are being _very rude _to your papa right now!_"

Bellatrix rolled her eyes. "_Really, Régis, what incentive does she have to be polite if the worst you're going to do to her is yell a bit and be _very disappointed?" she asked, cutting the tip of one finger with her dueling knife — she really was _absurdly_ quick, Severus barely had time to notice that it had appeared before she banished it back into Shadows again — and sketching a few symbols on the other girl's forehead.

"_That's cold, what are you doing?_"

"_If I'm going to keep you safe, it would be good for me to know when you're in trouble, yes?_"

"_What are you doing to my daughter, Miss Black?_" Régis demanded, obviously inclined to stop her, but unwilling to interrupt blood magic in progress, which was hardly surprising — Severus doubted that whatever Bellatrix was doing would potentially harm the girl, given that she'd _just_ sworn to keep her safe, but Régis hadn't really been paying attention to them, preoccupied as he was by his daughter's insistence that she wanted to sleep in Gryffindor Tower.

"_Mmm, it's...an adaptation, you could say, of a protective mark a cursebreaker friend of mine used on his sister over the summer, and the shadow tracking thing Gabbie put on the carriage to follow it here. And a transmission element like you'd find in a communication mirror. Much simpler, though, since I only need it to alert me if she's in danger_."

Severus could see the moment the diplomat realised that Bellatrix was doing blood _runes _rather than some more instantaneous form of blood magic, about halfway through her explanation. This was both comforting to the concerned father — whatever she was doing had not yet been activated and could therefore be stopped without placing his daughter in greater danger — and more disturbing — blood magic _enchanting_ was right up there with runic casting so far as the degree of danger it posed if done incorrectly. More _stable_, certainly, but that only meant that the greater danger was to the _target_ rather than the _caster_.

And that it was a spell Bellatrix could not possibly have invented before seeing his daughter's shadow magic tracking charm certainly didn't help to reassure him that it was entirely safe to cast. "_Do you mean to say that this is some spell you have invented in the past two days?!_"

"_Well, _no_, I'm saying that this is a spell I'm making up _now_, defining it as I would a rune-cast charm._"

Severus snorted. Of _course_ it was.

"_You are WHAT? Get away from my daughter!_"

"_Her part is done anyway,_" Bellatrix muttered, taking a step back and turning her attention to her own off hand.

"_Gabrielle, wipe that mess off your face right now!_"

"_No!_" the girl exclaimed, batting away her father's attempts to do just that. "_It's fine, Papa! It doesn't _hurt—"

"_That is because she hasn't _done _anything yet, you stubborn, silly child! There is still time_—"

"—_and _you _were the one who was all worried about me not being safe! Surely it is good, then, if the quiet girl knows if I need help!_"

"_What would Lise say about you allowing some girl you hardly know to paint blood runes all over you?!_"

"_Probably 'don't,'_" the little veela admitted, hiding behind the very confused Potter to avoid her father mussing up the enchantment. "_But she is not _some girl I hardly know_, Papa! She is my friend! She would not hurt me, I am sure of it!_"

"Ah...Gabbie? Lyra? What's going on?" Harry asked uneasily, glaring at the angry wizard attempting to reach his daughter around him, fingers twitching toward his wand.

_Calm down, Potter, he's not going to hurt her_, Severus assured him. _He's simply concerned about Bellatrix recklessly endangering your new girlfriend._

_She's not—_ That thought quickly unraveled into an inarticulate mess of embarrassment, _wishing_ that Gabrielle Delacour wanted to snog him, guilt and anxious concern that Zabini would have some sort of problem with this desire, because Potter actually enjoyed the little veela's company in a way Zabini didn't that of _his_ other lovers. Both of which were patently ridiculous associations. Severus supposed it wasn't entirely surprising that Potter was unfamiliar with veela mores, but he _had_ to know that Zabini wouldn't mind. Idiot child...

"Papa think _the quiet girl_ is doing a bad thing," Gabrielle explained, pointing at her forehead.

Is _Lyra recklessly endangering Gabbie?_

_Given that Bellatrix swore to protect her only moments ago, I suspect the balance of probability is weighted toward _no_._ Potter, obviously seeking further reassurance regarding the basis of his assessment that Bellatrix intended to keep her word, plucked cautiously at a few of the more closely related memories — the junior Bellatrix's presence always drew memories of the original closer to the surface. Severus glared at him, deflecting the probe. _I am neither Zabini nor your thrice-cursed godfather, Potter. You do _not _have leave to rifle through my memories as you like._

Potter recoiled immediately, withdrawing into his own mind-space like a frightened turtle, a slightly horrified expression forming on his face.

"Miss Black is casting a spell on Gabrielle which she is making up as we speak! I beg you, Mister Potter, wipe those symbols from my daughter's face!"

"No! Do not!" the girl ordered him, as he turned to her, still obviously confused. "I trust _the quiet girl_, she will not harm to me!"

Potter's decision to obey the girl rather than her father might have had less to do with conscious choice, and more to do with the fact that he was a bit preoccupied, extending a single small, terrified thought in Severus's direction. _I'm sorry, I didn't mean to._

Oddly enough, Severus actually believed that. Potter was, to all appearances, less inclined to use mind magic _casually_ than Severus himself. Zabini and Black were simply _terrible_ influences for an otherwise relatively isolated young mind mage to be surrounded by, shamelessly manipulative and aggressively open-minded as they were. _Don't do it again_.

"_Gabbie! Your new friend is a very dangerous person! You should not trust her!"_

"_You are aware that your second statement is not logically related to the first, are you not, Your Excellency?_" Bellatrix quipped absently, still doodling with blood on her own arm.

Severus suspected that it was her tone more than her words that prompted the mild-mannered Frenchman to draw his wand on her. Adding, "_You shouldn't make threats you're not prepared to execute_," with that damnable distracted smirk when he did so probably didn't help, the tension around the man increasing to the point Severus actually thought he might hex her and fuck the diplomatic consequences. (Not that Bellatrix was likely to even consider using her position as the heir of a Noble and Most Ancient House to create a scandal for him if he were to do so, but Régis certainly didn't know that.)

"Er...it's probably fine, Mister Delacour. Lyra's kind of scary good at runes, you know. And, um...she did just promise to keep Gabby safe. Professor Snape...would, um, stop her, I think, if she was really doing something dangerous. Like, dangerous to other people, not to herself."

_Very astute, Potter_.

"Severus! You were so very concerned to realise that Bellatrix had so much as set foot in our home! Surely you cannot approve of this– this _recklessness_ from her young _copie_! She is but a child! This is madness!"

"_I still think madness should be _expected _from people who are generally considered to be mad... Also, it hardly matters whether either of you approve, it's done._"

Even as she spoke, there was a pulse of magic, darkness condensing out of the aether to whirl around the girls.

"_Ah! Okay, _that _is _not _comfortable!_" Gabrielle said, shivering as the magic sank into her.

"Gabrielle!" Régis exclaimed, very nearly shoving Potter aside to gather his daughter into his arms.

"_Oh, don't be a baby, Gabbie. It's almost done._" Sure enough, the darkness drew together even further, forming a sort of tether or cable between them which seemed almost solid, or would have had it not immediately begun fading slowly from sight. Bellatrix giggled. "_Better?_"

Gabrielle blinked a few times, inspecting her arms as though she expected to see some visible effect. "_Yes. What does it do?_"

"_It alerts me when you're scared and therefore presumably in need of rescuing. See..._ Can one of you mind mages make yourselves useful and frighten my veela?"

"Um, _no_? Why? What did you do?" Potter asked. Even as he denied any intention of doing so, however, he projected his growing anxiety around himself. The young veela, obviously attempting to follow the English conversation by eavesdropping on him, picked up on the emotion immediately, presumably assumed there was a reason for it, and echoed it back, which reinforced Potter's suspicion that there was something wrong, a feedback loop growing between them in a matter of seconds.

A small image of a bird appeared on Bellatrix's forearm — in nearly _exactly_ the same spot as the Dark Mark, which he assumed was _not_ a coincidence — growing larger and more obvious as Gabrielle grew more disturbed. The tiny madwoman giggled again. "Perfect! Or, well, kind of stings a bit, but yeah, obviously works. You can stop now."

"Lyra! What did you _do_?" Potter repeated.

"_What is happening? Lyra, you're scaring me..._"

"Miss Black!"

"Whatever you're doing, _stop it_! Can't you see you're scaring Gabbie?!"

_Oh, for fuck's sake_. "She's not doing anything, you two have caught each other in a negative feedback loop."

Understanding dawned on Régis — he began murmuring softly in his daughter's ear, talking her down, presumably. Severus was hardly inclined to be so gentle with Potter. Projecting openly as he was, it required no effort at all to invade his mind and clamp down on his consciousness. He fell bonelessly to the floor, the pain of the impact of his perennially untidy head on the thin periwinkle carpet (and the polished silvery-grey floorboards beneath it) waking him up almost as quickly.

"_Ow_! What the _fuck_! Did you— Was that a wandless stunning spell?" the boy demanded, scowling from Severus to Bellatrix, as though uncertain which of them was responsible for his sudden familiarity with the floor.

"No, that was an egregious abuse of mind magic," Régis informed him, glaring at Severus once again.

Severus gave him an unrepentant shrug before addressing the boy. "Consider being knocked out for half a second a cheap lesson on the dangers of leaving yourself entirely open to attack, Potter."

Bellatrix smirked at him. "Yeah, he could've made you cut tally-marks on yourself every minute until you fought him off or something."

Something like pity bloomed in Régis's eyes — the sort of deliberately sympathetic expression routinely used when addressing abused and traumatised children, albeit rather hesitantly. (He clearly was not inclined to forgive her casting an untested enchantment on his daughter regardless of how abusive her childhood might have been.) "Is this a thing that someone truly did to you, Miss Black?"

Severus, personally, had always _hated_ that expression. He refused to portray it for his Slytherins, no matter how pitiable their home lives might be. Bellatrix, on the other hand, seemed not to recognise it at all. "Well...yeah, obviously? I mean, I was about four at the time, so I don't really remember it very well, I just know that that was what those particular scars came from." She shrugged. "It's not a big deal. Tally marks don't _really _hurt. It wasn't a punishment, just a lesson."

Potter, almost as horrified as Régis, seemed to be struck dumb, overcome by a complex tangle of memories comparing his own childhood to the hints Bellatrix had given about hers, regretting that he had ever thought she'd had it easier than he had, with a family who actually noticed she _existed_ and treated her as something more than a servant boy.

(Severus quashed the urge to go throttle Petunia Evans, which was _far_ more difficult than it ought to have been.)

Régis, on the other hand, had no trouble speaking up. "_Gabrielle, I do not care if this mad little girl intends to look after you along with your sister and your schoolmates, you're going back to Aquitania — clearly the British are even more horrifying than I was lead to believe_—"

"It's not so much a _British_ thing as a _House of Black_ thing," Bellatrix interrupted, doing that odd simultaneous translation trick again. "We have _much_ higher expectations for our children than any other House. Or, you know, we did, when we had children. Anyway, I don't think this changes anything, really. Does it, Gabbie?"

"_No_," the little veela said firmly, apparently recovered from her scare with the feedback loop — though that more than anything should have made it obvious to her how much danger she was potentially in. "_Papa, I am staying, and I am going to prove that there is nothing to be scared of because I can control myself _just fine—" She was apparently entirely unaware of the irony inherent in that statement. "—_and I am sleeping in Lyra's room, because I am here to experience British culture, and we're going to make a balcony and hang—" _...hammocks? Probably hammocks, Severus couldn't imagine what else they might be hanging on a _balcon_...assuming a _balcon_ was, in fact, a balcony. "—_on it, and you can't stop me. Come on, Harry,_" she said, flouncing toward the door with her nose in the air and Potter's hand in hers.

Régis let her go, staring after her the picture of a broken man — a father realising for perhaps the first time that he no longer held the authority he once had in his baby girl's life, a note of mourning in the helpless concern he quite rightly felt at the idea of Gabrielle wandering the grounds and halls of Hogwarts, outside of his direct and constant supervision.

"I hate to break it to you, Régis, but teenagers are rebellious." Severus should know, the number he'd been tasked with guiding through their most tumultuous years over the past decade and more. "This is an immutable fact, regardless of the species of the child in question."

"Not _all_ teenagers — _I'm_ not rebellious," Bellatrix said, demonstrating an even greater lack of self-awareness than Gabrielle insisting that she could control herself _just fine_, bare moments after failing to do so.

Oh, yes, because running away from your _entire universe_ was evidence of _such_ biddability. Though he could hardly point that out in front of Régis. "You have no one to rebel _against_, and you _still _attempted to start a prank war with the most dangerous witch in Europe, from a thousand miles away."

Bellatrix blinked at him for a long second, apparently wondering where the _hell_ he'd heard _that_, as her conjecture was: "I don't like you and Sirius being friends."

She vanished into the Dark before he could snap that _your manic-depressive overgrown pet dog and I are _not _friends_, leaving him alone with the diplomat, who was still staring at the door through which his younger daughter had exited.

He sighed heavily. "_I suppose I should write a letter to Appoline. Surely you also have duties which require your attention?_" If he didn't sound half as though he wished Severus would say no and offer to share a drink with him, Severus would have called that dismissive.

Unfortunately for Régis, however, Severus _did_ have duties to attend to, up at the school. "Quite so. If you would excuse me," he said stiffly, acutely aware that he had categorically failed to accomplish the favour Régis had asked of him. A foregone conclusion, perhaps, but still somewhat disappointing. "Do try not to worry overly much." He had not, after all, made the girl Bellatrix's problem for no reason. "Miss Black is more than capable of ensuring your daughter's safety." And when she gave her word, she kept it — both gods and house elves tended to be sticklers for following through on their promises.

Régis snorted, refusing to dignify that with a response. "_Good night, Severus_."

Severus saw himself out.

* * *

_This is a thing I was going to comment on in a previous chapter, but forgot about: In case anyone's wondering, in my headcanon, Barty Junior would have given his students an assignment which involved casting a few charms at a piece of parchment, as some sort of evaluation, and then faked a stumble on one of the hundreds of bloody staircases (blaming the peg-leg, and definitely not the fact that he's always taking hits from that hip flask, of course he's not drunk, how dare you imply such a thing…), "accidentally" dropping the folder with all of the completed assignments in it and giving "anyone" the opportunity to acquire a piece of parchment which had been exposed to Harry Potter's magic, and had his name written on it, without casting any suspicion on himself. Presuming that a confundus charm must have been used to affect the goblet would have been a similar measure to divert suspicion. In this timeline, since he's not the Defense Professor, he had to come up with a different plan. —Leigha_


	32. Relationships Are Hard

By the time Lyra and Gabrielle had managed to convince Ros that it was an urgent, essential matter of hospitality to ask the Castle to put a balcony outside of Lyra's window — and explained their plan to sleep out there, because veela didn't _like_ enclosed spaces (even if _rooms_ were acceptable, and it was just the smaller enclosed space of the actual _bed_ which had made Gabbie too uncomfortable to sleep) and Lyra had never considered sleeping in the open air before (without even a _tent_), but had instantly decided that this was a thing she _must do_ — it was rather late. Lyra suspected, in fact, that Ros had only capitulated because she needed to go to sleep in order to be sufficiently well-rested to supervise the morning baking. Elves, like Lyra, didn't need _much_ sleep, but morning baking began at four.

As such, Maïa and Gin had long since gone to bed by the time Lyra and Gabbie made their way up to the dorm. Lyra had offered Gabrielle her bed again because she wasn't terribly tired yet, and settled in to continue working through the implications of the weird time-freezing thing Angel had done the night before...or even just how she might've done that. It wasn't until about the time the elves would be waking up that she decided she could use a nap, flopped into bed beside Gabrielle, and promptly passed out.

She was awakened what couldn't have been more than a few hours later — it was still dark out — by Maïa hissing her name increasingly loudly and, when she didn't immediately respond, Gin hitting her with a fucking stinging jinx, which was _not_ on her list of top ten ways to be woken up. Her wand was in her hand and a sizzling dark cutting curse flying at the little red-headed bitch before she was awake enough to realise she probably _shouldn't_ do that. Gin did manage to deflect it though, and it didn't have any effect on non-biological materials, so it didn't hurt the wall. So, it was fine, right?

"Jesus _Christ_, Lyra, what was that?!"

"...Non-fatal." Probably. "You started it." She yawned. "What do you want?"

"_Why is there a veela in your bed, Lyra?!_" Maïa...sort of whisper-yelled, it was weird.

Lyra was...pretty sure she didn't understand the question. Not fair, asking stupid questions when she'd only been conscious for about five seconds. It didn't look like Maïa had been up much longer, either — she was still in her nightclothes, her curls sleep-tousled and wild, a crease from her pillow pressed into her right cheek — but that was no excuse. Also, since Gabbie hadn't even twitched at Gin bloody _shouting_ over there, she was pretty sure Maïa wasn't going to wake her up just _talking_. She, accordingly, made no effort to moderate her own volume. "Er...where else would she sleep?"

"_Somewhere she's _not _wrapped around my naked girlfriend, maybe?!_"

She wasn't _literally_, not like Dora or Zee, though she _had_ migrated in her sleep to snuggle up next to Lyra, all tense and curled in on herself. Probably cold. It was actually unseasonably warm for November, Lyra hadn't felt it necessary to start wearing even a nightshirt yet this year, but it _did _tend to be warmer in Aquitania. "What does that have to do with anything?"

She idly cast a warming charm on the kid, who relaxed immediately. _Called it_.

"_What does—?!_"

"Also, why are you doing that, with the whispering? It sounds like it hurts."

Maïa huffed at her. "In what universe is it _not significant_ to find your girlfriend lying naked in bed with a bloody sex demon?!"

"Sex demon? Where did you read _that_?" Because that wasn't accurate _at all_. She meant, the People didn't, as a rule, tell outsiders much about themselves, and English books on non-human beings were notoriously terrible, but that one struck her as being _unusually_ wrong.

"It doesn't matter, Lyra!"

"I think it does. I mean, for one thing, _the People_—" whose name for themselves was one of the few words she knew in their language, "—are completely mundane, they just did some blood magic ritual a ways back to turn themselves into birds." _A ways back_ meaning _prehistoric times_, though Lyra wasn't really certain how many millennia they were talking. Sirius, who was her primary source of information on veela, was not nearly as interested in the history of the species as he was in the after-effects of their weird mental sex magic, which was, in his words, _very_ floaty and just..._calm_ and _slow_ and _nice_. "And I...don't _think_ they _have_ to screw people to siphon mental energy from them, it's just fun. I mean, _psychic vampire_ is closer than _sex demon_, and even that's not _close, _close."

Of course, they did have an aura of sexiness, supposedly, to people who weren't completely blind to mind-magic — that was why Zee didn't like them, _she _actually had to _work_ to charm and/or seduce any random human she happened to come across. But Lyra didn't think it was _that_ big a deal? Not unless they panicked because some arsehole was accosting them and lost control, or they were purposefully teasing an entire quidditch stadium, or something.

"Do _not_ change the subject, Lyra!"

Lyra checked the time with a flick of her wand, and let herself flop back down beside Gabrielle. She'd only been asleep for about two hours.

"Fuck, I'm running late! I'll see you later!" Gin exclaimed, charming her hair up and booking it toward the door.

Lyra was pretty sure she was lying, it was _barely_ six, she had plenty of time yet for her run. If she _had_ to guess, she'd say Gin just didn't want to suffer through whatever baffling argument was about to ensue. To be perfectly honest, Lyra didn't really, either. Not that she really had a problem with _arguments_, she just hated it when people — especially objectively intelligent people who actually _knew_ her — decided to be fucking stupid and confusing for reasons which were _never_ satisfactorily explained. And this was _definitely_ going to be one of those (entirely un-fun) arguments: she'd already been accused of trying to change the subject, and they'd only been talking for about a minute, so. "You're going to have to tell me what the subject is, then. Because I have no idea."

"You! Sleeping with another girl!"

"...Did you want me to sleep with _you_? Because you were all sprawled out, I don't think I could've gotten in your bed without waking you up. Besides, you didn't want to share a bed back in September."

That had been the source of a similarly confusing conversation, because Lyra had been under the impression that 'dating' implied that they _weren't_ obligated to sleep in separate beds, which meant they could transfigure one of them a little bigger and get rid of the other, which seemed like a really good idea, because the room had gotten kind of cramped when the elves moved Gin's furniture in with them last year. Maïa had had equally inarticulate objections to that _entirely reasonable_ plan — though in that case they'd been flushed and stuttery objections, rather than inexplicably furious objections.

"Why is _she_ in your bed _at all_, Lyra?!"

"Er...she _had_ to sleep _somewhere_, didn't she?" A thought suddenly occurred to her. "Is relegating children to parlours a muggle thing?"

"What the _hell_ are you talking about, Lyra?"

"Oh, well, when I first got here, I stayed with Meda for a few days, and Dora wanted me to sleep on a _sofa_, which is admittedly appealing because, well, that is _not_ what sofas are meant for, but also not as comfortable as a bed, so I had to explain to her that even when you _do_ have more guests than beds — which doesn't exactly happen _often_, but sometimes, like at weddings and funerals — you don't start assigning children to parlours, you just share with your cousins."

"She isn't your _cousin_, Lyra! She's a _veela_!" Well, that didn't mean they weren't cousins of _some_ degree. Like, step- step-third cousins once removed, or something? Jamie was her second cousin once removed, which would make Liz a step-second cousin once removed, and...she wasn't really sure how Lizzie's wife and Gabbie were related, but still... And what difference did it make if they were or weren't cousins, anyway? "Excuse me for having a problem with my girlfriend being seduced by some—"

She cut herself off as Gabbie finally realised it was time to get up (apparently), stirring and groaning, "What time is it?" She managed to prise her eyes open and added, sounding slightly outraged, "It's still dark out! Not morning!" but quickly realised that there was another person present, sitting up with an eager grin. "Oh! You are Lyra's Maïa! Hello! Good morning! I can talk to you now! I have been waiting for _two whole days_ to— You're really pretty! Your mind is all sparkly, like snow falling in moonlight! But swirly, and more colourful. I'm Gabbie. Hi."

For a long moment, Maïa just stared, obviously somewhat put off by her enthusiasm. "...Why are you in my girlfriend's bed, Gabbie?"

"Oh! Because, see, okay, wait. We need to start from yesterday. Or, maybe from the day before. Or last summer? See, I promised Papa I would not come to Hogwarts with the other students from Beauxbatons, because he was so very worried that British people are racist and terrible and dangerous, so obviously I had to come alone, so I was following Madame's carriage to here, but I was very tired because maps are _stupid_, Britain is _not_ that close to _Provença_! And the quiet girl shadow walked out of the air, I thought I was hallucinating, honestly, because she's so very, you know, _quiet_, and she said I should use the floo network to get here instead of flying, which, yes, okay, that is a good idea, but she _didn't_ say it was bad that I was coming here, and helped me get here, and then I met Gin and Harry and Blaise, and kind of you, except not, because I was hiding from you so that you wouldn't tell my father about my super brilliant clever-person plan to prove he is wrong about British people, so I did not say hi, even though you're _very_ pretty.

"And then Fleur became our Champion — Fleur is my sister, she's _amazing_ and _perfect _and the _best_ big sister _ever_ — but somehow Papa found out that I was not at school almost immediately, and then Lord Sirius told me I had to take off the Press Hat of Unobtrusiveness, which is sad, because it's a _gorgeous_ hat, so he knew I was there, and he tried to make me leave, but I told him even if he _made_ me go home, I would just come back, and it will be easier now that I know not to fly myself, and so he and Mean Master Snape tried to convince me that British people are terrible racists who will rape and/or kill me — mostly Mean Master Snape, Papa would never say such things himself. But I told them no, I was staying, and they could not stop me, and all British people are not so awful, Harry was there, too, he came to visit me, all worried that I would leave, he's so cute! And so Mean Master Snape said Lyra must keep me safe, even if we both told him I would have gotten here by myself and I don't need a minder, I'm _fourteen_! I've met the sky! I am perfectly capable of taking care of myself! Except with maps, because maps are stupid.

"And so we talked to the chieftess of the elves and asked her to ask the castle to make a balcony for us so we can sleep under the stars because the quiet girl is far too serious, obviously, because she has never thought of this before, but the elf, Ros, she would not talk to the castle then because it was late and she wanted us to go away, and she would do it today, so—"

Maïa seemed to be slowly recovering from the overwhelming deluge of...explanation (kind of), because that was the point at which she interrupted to ask, "Gabbie. What does all of this have to do with you and Lyra being in bed, naked, together?"

"I am getting there! Because Ros would not ask the castle to make us a balcony last night, and it was late and I was tired because Beauxbatons is _very_ far away, and I'm still so sore, I should not have flown so far, that was, yes, silly of me, and we do not have hanging beds yet, anyway, the quiet girl said I could sleep here again. And, er...I guess she also decided to sleep, even though she said she wasn't sleepy?"

"That was before I spent four hours trying to work out whether Angel broke the universe on Samhain, or if everything I thought I knew about cross-planar dimensional dynamics is wrong," Lyra explained. (It _really_ could go either way, and Eris refused to give her a hint.) "I figured you wouldn't mind sharing a bed. You know, seeing as you still don't even believe I'm _real_."

"No, no, it's fine, I don't mind. And I have come to be convinced that you are _real_, but possibly _only magic_ — dark, tingly, wild magic — pretending to be some odd human-vampire hybrid, like my cousins who are part human, because things that do not feel are not living beings, this is a _fact_."

Maïa's glare grew even narrower. "Don't be ridiculous, of _course_ she's a living being!"

...Though she might also kind of sort of be magic just pretending to be human, Lyra realised. Never mind that she actually _did_ feel things, or some things, at least (even if Gabrielle couldn't feel her feeling them), _living being_ and _magic pretending to be human_ weren't actually mutually exclusive categories. Consciousness and magic were fundamentally entwined, and she clearly _wasn't_ actually human anymore, in any sense of the term. She still hadn't had a chance to talk to Maïa about that whole _avatar_ conversation with Angel and Persephone and Lily Evans. Maïa had been too wiped out immediately after the ritual, and... Well, there had been _time_ yesterday, it just hadn't come up, really. And she couldn't bring it up _now_, that really _would_ be changing the subject.

Gabrielle gave the only human in the room a noncommittal shrug. "I didn't even know she was there. Like waking up with a very large, warm, breathing _doll_. And as to why we are nude, clothes are just so..._confining_. How can anyone stand to sleep _wearing clothes_?"

"So...you didn't sleep together?"

"Well, for a couple of hours, I guess," Lyra admitted, still not getting the problem.

This was apparently a wrong answer, because Maïa only grew more annoyed. "You know what I mean, Lyra! And I have to say, being deliberately evasive like this only leads me to think the answer is _yes_!"

Lyra let her eyes drift up to the canopy, fighting back her annoyance at being told that she _must_ understand some ridiculous thing, and was simply _lying_ about it, for some inexplicable reason. "I really don't. I _know_ we've talked about this..."

"Ah...I think she means as a euphemism? For sex?"

"Yes! Obviously!" That hadn't been _at all_ obvious to Lyra, but okay...

"Er...no. Please don't be offended, pretty, sparkly Maïa, I'm certain your relationship is very satisfying for you, but you are human. I would not have sex with the quiet girl. I don't think any veela would. It is... It would just be _physical_, and so what would be the point?"

Maïa _did_ look as though she might be slightly offended, though Lyra wasn't certain _why_. She also seemed to need a moment to think of a response.

"Pretty sure the point would be the orgasms," Lyra pointed out.

"Orgasms without passion are just chemistry," Gabbie insisted. "There are _charms_ for that, they aren't _special_."

"And here I thought orgasm-inducing charms were just cheating because they don't require any _skill_." Lyra smirked, thinking of Zee's opinion on the matter.

The veela shook her head violently. "No, dedication to perfecting a skill is passion, even if your partner is a stranger and there is no personal connection. That's what makes it different."

"I'm _definitely_ introducing you to Zee... See, she has this theory that orgasms—"

"Could you two _please_ stop talking about orgasms?!"

"Um...sure? Why would you care if I were having sex with Gabbie? You know, assuming veela didn't think I'm even creepier than dementors do."

"...Because we're _dating_, Lyra!"

"Blaise and Harry are dating, and Blaise still has sex with his Hufflepuffs. Granted, Harry doesn't, but I'm pretty sure that's because he doesn't even have the confidence to snog Gabbie, so."

Gabrielle's eyes lit up, a brilliant grin splitting her face. "Ooh! Do you think he really wants to? I thought so, but I wasn't sure how much was him wanting to, and how much was me wanting him to want to..."

"Pretty sure, yeah? I mean, I'm _terrible_ at people, but he was all fae-struck and googly-eyed like he is over you for Blaise before they started sleeping together, literally _or_ euphemistically. Though, it was _months_ before he finally did anything about it, so you might have to make the first move if you're planning on shagging him before Easter."

"Yes, about Blaise, do you think he would be interested, too? They are so cute together, and there is less chance I would hurt them if we are all three together..."

Hurt them? Presumably that was something to do with the weird mind magic sex thing, though Sirius hadn't actually said anything about it being potentially _dangerous_. And Harry was a legilimens, shouldn't that make weird mind magic things _less_ dangerous for him? Hmmm... Maybe she should tell Siri to talk to him about it, just in case there was anything he should know ahead of time. But it wasn't like it wouldn't take even a veela a _few_ days to work through Harry's eternal awkwardness, so there was time. Lyra shrugged. "Sure? I don't know. I mean, he's a Zabini, so I assume he'd be up for it."

"Lyra! Focus!"

"What am I focusing _on_, Maïa?"

"_Us_, Lyra!"

"What about us?"

"Dating! We're dating, Lyra! You're my girlfriend!"

"Er...yes? What does that have to do with this conversation?"

"You don't go around having sex with people you aren't dating, Lyra!"

Well, that was just..._categorically_ false. "That can't possibly be right. I mean, there's Zee and Sirius and Blaise, obviously, but then, I'm pretty sure Snape's still shagging Sinistra, even though he's actually 'dating' Dora." Who was also fucking multiple people, or had been before she ran off to play Black Cloaks, but she claimed she was dating all of them — they went out to dinner and concerts and such — so that probably didn't count. "And conservatively, I'd guess at least half of the married adults I know are fucking people they aren't married to," which she thought _did_ count, because marriage _did_ kind of follow on dating (or courting). "I mean, Dru and Cygnus both did. Bella was definitely fucking both Riddle and Zee, and I don't think you could really call either of those relationship dating, and I don't know if _you'd_ count Marc but _I'd _definitely say that torturing a willing victim is more..._meaningful_ than having sex with someone—" Lyra hadn't been the _least_ bit surprised to learn (from Hati, who was the werewolf most willing to give Bella shite) that their cousin Marcus had followed Bella into the Death Eaters and volunteered to be one of her playthings. He'd been what, ten, when she'd left? And he'd already been gratifyingly willing to do anything she told him to, _or else_. Not unlike teasing Blaise, actually. "—and I'm pretty sure she wasn't dating him, either... And now we're doing the horrified staring thing again. _Why_?"

And why was there _never_ a Zabini around when she needed one?!

Gabbie giggled, high and hesitant. The monitoring spell she'd worked between them tingled slightly as the mark which signified Gabrielle's fear grew visible, so probably _nervously_.

Lyra grinned down at the little sparrow silhouette. She'd kind of been exaggerating when she'd told Régis that she was making that spell up at that very moment. She hadn't actually worked through the implications of using blood-runes for the enchantment beforehand — she had been planning on using runic casting, or maybe a tattoo — and obviously she'd used some elements that she hadn't tried together before, but she'd been working on a way to keep track of Emma for months, now, it was practically inevitable that someone would try to kidnap or assassinate her eventually. It seemed that the _relating_ element she'd stolen from Gabbie's shadow-tracking charm was _exactly_ what she'd been looking for. And the image she'd used for the visual representation had turned out just as she'd pictured it, too. She'd give it a few more weeks just to make sure there were no obvious side-effects on either end, but that _looked_ like one major project more or less done! Now if she could figure out how to get that muggle wand working...

"Because pretty, sparkly Maïa does not find pleasure in pain." _Oh, right, _focus_, Lyra! _"She is afraid that this means you do not enjoy having sex with her."

Maïa went red at that, suggesting she was at least close to the mark, but "That can't be right, Maïa isn't ready to have sex with me, or anyone, yet. Even though she agrees that orgasms are fun." They'd had an honestly baffling conversation in the wake of Maïa's Introduction ritual, about why Maïa was so...weird, about almost shagging Lyra in front of Gin. Lyra had pointed out that there were loads of times Gin _wasn't_ around, if that was the problem, and Maïa had awkwardly explained that she wasn't comfortable with the idea of sex, yet...even though she _was_ apparently comfortable with the idea of masturbating...but not talking about it...because reasons. It had been an especially _annoying_ conversation because not only did Lyra not get it, but Maïa had also asked her _not_ to talk to Blaise about it, because she didn't want Blaise knowing about their sex life or lack thereof — again, because...reasons. ("Dating", so far as Lyra could tell, was most easily distinguished from "being friends" by the number of baffling conversations she was expected to participate in.)

"But, if you have not met the sky, how do you know how you like to have sex?" she asked Maïa, sounding nearly as confused as Lyra still was.

"I don't understand," Maïa choked out, _very_ red.

"Veela puberty is kind of different from humans," Lyra explained, brushing her confusion aside. Honestly, that was about all Sirius knew about it, or at least all he'd told her — that they went through some sort of birdy metamorphosis they called _meeting the sky_ when they were about...twelve? and the weird veela mind magic sex thing kicked in as part of it, like going from being an innocent little kid to a sex-starved teenager overnight. (Assuming Sirius wasn't exaggerating, which wasn't at all out of the question.) It wasn't really relevant at the moment. "Orgasms and hurting people are different kinds of fun." Neither of them were quite _as much_ fun as fighting for her life, but she was pretty sure they didn't need to talk about that again.

Contrary to Lyra's expectation, Maïa _hadn't_ endlessly brought up their discussion on the train, regarding the Riot. Lyra almost thought she'd been avoiding talking about it, actually, which was fine, they could do that. They'd had more than enough baffling conversations lately she wasn't going to complain about _not_ talking about something for once, and anyway, the less she thought about it the fainter the itch to go find someone to try to kill her became. It never entirely went away, though. Not really. (Not coincidentally, she never managed to not think about it for very long.) And she'd been absolutely right about hunting spiders _not_ being enough anymore. And since she couldn't _actually_ just go find a war zone to go blow off some steam, she _really_ needed to find a duelling partner.

(_She_ thought finding a nice war zone to holiday in seemed like a _great_ idea, but apparently Siri had been being sarcastic about vacationing in Rwanda, and they weren't even killing people there anymore anyway. _Arse_.)

Ideally such a duelling partner would be at least a _little_ better than her, so she didn't have to worry about accidentally killing them if she didn't hold back, but not _so _far beyond her that they'd completely crush her in two seconds if _they_ didn't hold back — it wasn't like she'd get better if she always _won_, but if she couldn't fight back, there'd be no point — who wouldn't go easy on her like Siri and Dora, didn't give a shite about the legality of her spells, had the stamina to actually wear her out, and didn't think it was absolutely insane to throw around potentially lethal magic in practice bouts. Or was willing to play along, even if they _did_ think it was absolutely insane, she wasn't picky. Though, if they actually _liked_ fighting, that would be a plus. She didn't _think_ that was too much to ask for? (...It was possible she'd spent a slightly absurd amount of time over the last couple of months fantasising about finding this perfect duelling partner.)

Her musing was interrupted by a sharp fingernail poking at her left temple. "Huh?" Oh, right, Gabrielle. Maïa. Sex.

"Pretty, sparkly Maïa was reminding you that you told her not so long ago that you think sex and murder are somehow analogous subjects and not in fact _opposites_."

"Did I?" She meant, she didn't _disagree_, they were both very physically intimate acts...unless you used poison, or a beheading curse from _far_ too far away. Like, strangling someone, though, or stabbing them, though. But when...? _Oh!_ "I was actually just implying that Professor Riddle thinks they are. Which, again, I don't really _know_. I _do_ know he and Bella were into mixing up sex and pain and power games, though, so I'd be kind of surprised if they didn't get off on killing people occasionally." _Get off_ wasn't exactly right, she imagined it was a different kind of satisfying, like hurting people was a different kind of fun, but she didn't have words for these things. Kill people for their own gratification? Whatever.

"And you don't see why I might find that disturbing?"

"Obviously, no." She was _pretty sure_ it should be obvious, since she hadn't avoided saying it in the first place. She did _try_ not to make Maïa all awkward and uncomfortable with her.

"Lyra! You _just_ said torturing someone is more meaningful than having sex with them!"

"Er...yes, and?"

She didn't think she was _wrong_. Torturing someone tended to be _much_ more involved — well, if it wasn't just chucking pain curses at someone, that was kind of like hitting them with an orgasm-inducing charm, just...cheap — and having an ongoing torture-thing with someone seemed more...dynamic? than just shagging them.

She meant, even if you did think the pain felt good — which, it _could_, she knew, in certain circumstances...namely those in which she _wasn't_ being _forced_ to suffer them. Having Bella get rid of her scars had objectively hurt more than getting holes poked in herself, and she hadn't even been that _up_ at the time, but she...hadn't hated it? Not like she had the piercing hexes. She definitely wasn't about to go volunteering herself to be flayed, but knowing that she _could_ call it off and pushing herself to keep going anyway had been...kind of an interesting challenge. But even if the pain itself wasn't an all-bad thing, it was still more complicated than all-good things like orgasms.

That had to extend to the whole relationship, right? Like not _just_ hating the Cruciatus, but also kind of liking it because of after? (Again, not enough to _want_ to have it cast on her, just enough that it wasn't even that close to the top of her list of worst curses to suffer.) Or kind of liking losing a fight (but only if she was completely worn out and got to push herself as long and hard as she possibly could before losing) or being sore from training. It _hurt_, but in a good, achy sort of way.

And she _liked_ that complexity and ambivalence. It _was_ more meaningful than simple pleasure. "I also think writing a book together or being able to have _actual conversations_ is more meaningful than sex. I mean, there _are_ reasons I spend more time with you than Sylvie. Sure, sex is fun, and so is hunting, but it's like..._simple_ fun." Not _entirely_ unlike the way she did _really_ like being free out in the Forest in general, but wouldn't want to live there.

She grinned, pleased to have come up with such a good explanation — and without even a Zabini to help, too! — but even though she was pretty sure Maïa now understood what she meant, she didn't look equally delighted to understand. In fact, she looked kind of...surprised. In a bad way. "Er...Maïa?"

"You're... You've been having sex with _Sylvia_?"

Lyra shrugged. "Yeah, so?"

"How long?"

"Er...since sometime this summer?" After Zee started shagging Siri, because they'd been in bed together when she popped in to discuss the revelation that orgasms are, in fact, fun, and maybe Zee wasn't nearly as weird as Lyra had always thought for her obsession with sex. "The first or second of August, I think?" Because she'd been all edgy after going and hanging out with Bella that first time, and then having to try to act _especially_ normal all day because they went to a muggle amusement park for Harry's birthday (not like there were really _magical_ amusement parks, but), and she'd really, _really_ needed to get away from humans after that, which was the impetus for that particular hunting trip.

"So..._after_ we started dating."

"I guess?" That had been...early-ish in July, she'd have to check her diary on the exact date. "I repeat, so what?"

"So, you didn't think you should maybe _tell me_? Are you sleeping with anyone _else_?"

She got the impression that the right answer here was, "No."

Of course, it was also true — Zee had apparently grown out of finding teenagers attractive at some point in the past thirty years, and Sirius was trying to be a "responsible" adult, which apparently meant emulating the class-traitor, Henry Black bits of their House's long and illustrious history, but _not_ the fucking your mad, teenage cousins bits (not that it had even come up again after the riot). Blaise had actually backed off on their whole snogging-teasing thing because apparently Harry would care if he found out about it...because reasons, and... Yeah, that pretty much rounded out the list of people she was interested in touching at all, and would therefore have sex with if they wanted to.

Well, and Angel, obviously. But if Angel actually wanted to spend time with her, she was sure they could find more interesting things to do than sex.

"No, you didn't think you should tell me, or no, you're not sleeping with anyone else?"

"Er...both?" Oh! _Sleeping_ _with_ (as in, literally) reminded her of Dora, she should probably be on the list of people she wouldn't mind fucking, too. But she was somewhere in Italy at the moment, and if Zee fucking both Sirius and Bella was basically like Bella fucking Sirius, then Dora fucking both Snape and Lyra would be like Lyra fucking Snape, who definitely ruined her fun too often to be on the list...

"For future reference, Lyra, deliberately hiding something from me because you think I'm not going to like it is even worse than just _telling_ me!" Maïa snapped, getting all shirty about it.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "I wasn't deliberately hiding anything. I didn't really think about whether or not I should tell you at all. I guess if it had occurred to me, I probably would have thought I shouldn't anyway, but I wouldn't bother going out of my way to avoid talking about it." If she _were_, she definitely wouldn't have mentioned it just _now_. That seemed obvious, right? "I mean, you _did_ say you didn't want to know what I got up to out in the Forest with Sylvie, and it doesn't really have anything to do with you, so..."

"Oh, yes, my girlfriend going around sleeping with other people doesn't involve me _at all!"_

"I know you're being sarcastic, but obviously it doesn't. Why would it?"

"_Argh!_"

"I mean, did you want it to? I know you don't like Sylvie," though she didn't know why, "and I know you don't like the idea of shagging me in front of Gin, or at all, so I would've guessed—"

Maïa cut her off with another inarticulate noise of frustration.

"Being all _argh, I'm so frustrated with you Lyra, why can't you just magically know what stupid normal-people things I'll get inexplicably angry about if you don't tell me_, isn't going to help me understand what the fuck I'm doing wrong, here, you know."

"I'm not _angry_, Lyra, I'm _hurt_! I'm hurt that you didn't—" She cut herself off before she explained exactly what Lyra hadn't...done? said? which Lyra was _pretty sure_ was more frustrating than her confusion.

Well _Lyra_ was angry. Increasingly annoyed at the _very_ least. "What the fuck is the difference?!" she snapped, trying _very_ hard to rein in her temper, but she apparently had no idea how the universe worked anymore, and she'd been woken up with a bloody stinging jinx and now she was being told off and she had _no_ idea why! As far as _she_ knew she hadn't even broken any rules — Maïa had _explicitly told her_ that she didn't want to know what she did out in the Forest! She'd changed her mind about wanting even non-detailed information about Lyra killing people (though acromantulae didn't count because practically _everyone_ was weirdly racist about giant, man-eating spiders) or almost getting herself killed after less than two weeks of Lyra making a point to tell her, she'd assumed they were just back to _I don't want to know_!

Gabrielle jabbed her in the temple again, which did _not_ help her ability to concentrate on focusing exercises, at the moment. "_What_, Gabbie?"

"You are being mean and making your pretty, sparkly Maïa all _anxious_ and _sad_. Stop it!"

"I'm not _being mean_, I don't know—"

"Calling your girlfriend's feelings _stupid normal-person things_ is mean!"

"No, it's _not!_ Things that don't make sense _are _stupid! Maïa knows I don't think _she's_ stupid, she's probably the cleverest person I know, that just makes it even more frustrating when she _stops making sense_!"

The little veela sniffed at her, all French and disapproving. "Well, if things that don't make sense are stupid, then you're _both_ being stupid — you're not _listening_ to each other!"

"I'm _listening_!" Lyra snapped.

"No, you are _not!_ If you were listening, you would know your pretty, sparkly Maïa thinks that sex and companionship — physical and emotional intimacy — _go together_! And Maïa, you would know that the quiet girl thinks they _don't_, and _also_ that the things _you_ do with her are more important than sex and hunting with her Sylvia!" Well, that wasn't _necessarily_ true — if it weren't for hunting with Sylvie, Lyra might've tried to burn down the school by now, or left to be anywhere she didn't have to be around _so many humans, all the time_, so that was pretty important, but. "Sylvia is not _also_ her girlfriend— Euh, is she?"

"No. I don't think wolves are very formal about courting, I doubt they even have an equivalent term."

"Wait, _wolves_? You mean your Sylvia is wilderfolk?" Lyra nodded. Gabrielle turned a brilliant orange glare on Maïa. "And you know this?"

"Well, _yes, obviously_. I have _met_ her!"

"Human companionship and wilderfolk companionship are like apples and _potatoes_, Maïa! _Very different_. Even for outsiders, there is no reason to be so jealous!"

"_Outsiders_?" Maïa repeated, rather than acknowledge that Gabbie was _one-thousand per cent_ correct, and thinking that having sex with Sylvie meant, what? that Lyra preferred her over Maïa in some way? was bloody stupid. They didn't do _any_ of the same things together! At _all!_ It wasn't a choice between Maïa and Sylvie, it was a choice between doing something _intensely intellectual _or something _intensely physical!_ And most of the time it wasn't even a choice, Maïa was usually _asleep_ when Lyra went hunting. "You mean non-veela?"

"No, not exactly. The People are veela and lilin yes, but also humans. Outsiders are not of the People. You have different...culture, different ways of thinking, like about sex and companionship — we do not think they are always separate, but often — and how many make a family, and why to marry. And jealousy, possessiveness, is...not expected, I think, is a good way to say it. Your companions and sexual partners, you don't _own_ them. I mean, some people are into that, of course, but it's a bit odd?"

"I don't think I _own_ Lyra!"

"But you don't want to share her."

"Well— No, I just...want...all of her. God, that sounds so stupid," Maïa muttered, her face growing almost alarmingly red.

Lyra snorted. "No, you don't." Before her girlfriend could come up with words to go along with her instantaneous expression of outrage, she added, "I know you _think_ you do, but even _I_ know how uncomfortable you are with fighting and killing and being out in the wild, and even the _idea_ of almost-but-not-quite dying — I mean, Siri said I should've invited you to the World Cup, but I kind of think it was good I didn't, because I don't think you'd've liked the riot _at all_."

Maïa wilted slightly. "Well, _no_, but—"

"But nothing, Maïa. You want to pretend that isn't part of who I am, fine, but you _don't_ want all of me. Also, I'm pretty sure you're not physically capable of keeping up with me, and I'm pretty sure you shouldn't try. I mean, you always get kind of miserable after not sleeping for a couple of days. Why should you care if I'm out with Sylvie while you're unconscious?"

"Wait, are you not sleeping again?"

_Ugh_, were they going to have to have the _you need to sleep_ conversation again? Shite! Clearly she _did_ need more sleep, because she hadn't anticipated that. "Well, you _did_ just wake me up, which does imply that, yes, I've been sleeping." Occasionally.

"Lyra..."

"I'm _fine_, Maïa, I promise. I sleep when I'm tired."

"You're being evasive again."

"I wasn't being evasive _before_!"

"Lyra! How late have you been staying up?"

"Er..." That was kind of a hard question, really. Did it count as _staying up late_ if you just napped for a couple of hours in the middle of the day?

"You can't _not sleep_, Lyra! Do I need to drag you down to Madam Pomfrey so _she_ can tell you?"

"No." Pomfrey would probably try to sedate her, which had been tried, back when she was little and this was 'up' and not 'normal'. It didn't work, just made her all fuzzy-headed and miserable. "If you recall, I just said, I'm fine. I do sleep. Occasionally. When I'm tired."

"Which is how often? Approximately?" Maïa demanded, fixing her with a narrow, disapproving glare. "And how long has this been going on?"

"Can we go back to you being annoyed with me for fucking Sylvie?" Because given her preference, she'd rather make people angry at her than worried about her. Especially because not sleeping much was _perfectly normal_. For her. According to Eris.

The glare only narrowed.

"You know you look like Minnie when you do that?" She sighed, already anticipating the entirely unhelpful and unnecessary objections to _reality_ that Maïa was about to make. "And if you must know, _approximately_ fourteen, maybe sixteen hours a week? All summer. Which is, I repeat, _fine_," she added quickly, even as Maïa opened her mouth to offer the anticipated objections. "Given that you haven't noticed, there are obviously no adverse effects, so—"

"Get up."

"Er...what?"

"Get _up_, we're going to talk to Madam Pomfrey, right now."

"_No_. Look, this is perfectly normal!" For a mad Black coming into her power...she thought. Zee, admittedly, had said after the riot (when they'd had that talk about not losing her temper) that Bella hadn't been quite so _up _and volatile as Lyra at her age, but Bella could do occlumency, and Lyra was shadow-kin (as well as a "baby avatar", _apparently_), so she was pretty sure she was channelling more magic than Bella would have been when she was fourteen.

"Lyra, I'm not convinced you would recognise _perfectly normal_ if it walked up and bit you on the arse. You need to talk to a healer!"

"Zee said it's fine!" She hadn't, but Lyra couldn't exactly say that _Eris_ had said it was with Gabrielle _right there_, and she was betting Zee wouldn't think this was anything to be concerned about, either.

"Lady Zabini is not a healer!"

"_No_, but she _did_ know Bella when she was my age." She checked the time again before Maïa could come up with some way to dismiss _that_ argument, too, wriggling out of bed and slipping past her _very obviously still concerned_ girlfriend.

"Lyra, where are you going? This conversation isn't over!"

"Yes, it is. I'm not going to let Pomfrey try to sedate me — _try_ being the operative word, and have you ever been _partially_ sedated, it's fucking _miserable_ — and I'm not going to argue with you about _objective reality_. I'm _going _to take a shower and head down to breakfast because I _do_ actually need to _eat_, and if we don't hurry, there won't be time before Defence."

She pointedly ignored Maïa's response, stalking off toward the bathroom. She _did_, however, hear Gabrielle ask, "Are you sure the quiet girl isn't actually Magic pretending to be human?" and Maïa respond (her tone full of concern and annoyance), "If Magic were pretending to be human, I think it would do a better job," which, well... Lyra couldn't really disagree.

They were probably going to have to have a talk about the whole _avatar_ thing, too.

_Bugger!_

* * *

_Comparing apples and potatoes: pommes et pommes de terre, because they're speaking French even if no one mentions it at any point (because Lyra wouldn't notice), and humans and wilderfolk are more different than apples and pears. (And also because both Gabbie and Leigha think they're funny. —Lysandra)_

_I should have more notes, but I'm hung over, so deal with it. (I know you'll all be so very disappointed not having my silly rambling about random shite no one else cares about. Very sad.) —Leigha_

_The next chapter is finished (expect it in a couple days), and the one after that is almost done, but that's all we have written at the moment. Once we reach the end of our buffer, expect updates to slow down to as we finish them. —Lysandra_


	33. Welcome to Hogwarts — Elizabeth Delacour

Hogsmeade looked exactly the same, as though no time had passed at all.

Which was honestly slightly unsettling, Liz thought, though she couldn't put her finger on exactly why. The last time she'd been here — the last time she'd seen the village, the last time she'd seen Hogwarts, the sprawling, asymmetrical castle looming beautiful and a little imposing over the lake in the distance — had been December...1964, she thought. Almost exactly thirty years ago, now.

And that was a surreal thought, it seemed both much longer and much shorter than thirty years. She remembered that day with painful clarity, the day when everything had changed forever. It had been her seventh year, and her disagreement with Father had escalated to a breaking point — she'd gotten a letter, early that month, telling her that if she continued to refuse to go along with a proper marriage, she shouldn't come home for the holiday. In fact, she maybe should consider never coming home at all. She didn't think her father had actually _meant_ it, not really. She suspected he'd thought drawing that particular line in the sand would be enough to have her finally 'be reasonable' — after all, what good British girl would _choose_ to be exiled from her family, to be left entirely on her own, with nobody and nothing to rely on? No, she was all but certain Father had expected her to come home, that they would have a talk, and everything would be fine.

She'd been standing...just there, she thought — between the dirt close the carriages moving to and from Hogwarts settled in and the train platform, slightly off to the side just there. Only a few metres from where Liz stood right now, leaning against the railing on the stairs leading up to the platform. Kelsey had told her that she couldn't come home with her. That she'd gotten a letter from her own parents, just the day before, that Liz wasn't welcome at the Prewetts'. And Kelsey had made her apologies — tearful apologies, she'd clearly hated it, but she'd done her duty to her family anyway. And Liz had watched her girlfriend (going on nearly two years by then) get on the train, stood there silently as it'd pulled away.

And she'd been alone.

It felt...almost obscene, in a way, that Hogsmeade hardly seemed to have changed at all. The train platform was exactly the same, the packed dirt track and the thestral-drawn carriages on it might as well have become stuck in time a thousand years ago, the sleepy village more or less exactly as she remembered, thirty years later most of the same shops still run by the same people. Taking a walk through she'd even spotted Old Josie, looking only a little more decrepit than Liz remembered, sitting at the same spot on the same patio outside her house off Violet Way, chatting with the same circle of her little old friends and watching the students go by as usual. The students looked mostly the same too. The Hogwarts uniform hadn't changed at all, of course, and muggle fashions seemed to be _somewhat_ more common with the students than she remembered. But other than that, those minor cosmetic differences, it might as well still be 1960.

Which was just...odd. Forget for a moment her personal perspective — _everything_ had changed that day in December thirty years ago, an irrational part of her was convinced that Hogsmeade should have changed as much as she had — it wasn't just about her. Hadn't Britain been in a bloody war back in the 70s? Liz had been living in Aquitania for over a decade by the time it really started to pick up, she'd admit she wasn't as informed as it came to the particulars as she probably should be, but she felt _rather certain_ there had been at least one _major battle_ fought in Hogsmeade itself. In fact, she'd heard about half of the village had been completely levelled in the fighting. (A magical battle tended to be _very_ destructive for the surrounding environment, especially when dark sorcerers got involved.) That they'd apparently decided to rebuild the thing _exactly the same_ was...

Well, not surprising, when she thought about it. After all, there had seemingly been quite the push in the immediate aftermath to return the state of Britain to the _status quo ante_ as much as had been possible. There hadn't really been any political reconstruction, or economic remuneration toward the victims, or attempts to purge supporters of their Dark Lord with the silly name from important positions in society — no, they'd just _stopped fighting_, and stubbornly went on as normal, as though nothing had happened at all. Given all that, she supposed it wasn't unusual that the physical damage had been erased as much as possible, in a mindless attempt to revive the Britain that had been.

Like hanging flowers on a rotting tree, as the People would put it. It was just a little unsettling.

She pulled out her wand, snapped off a _tempus_ charm — Jamie's boy should be here any minute now. She shouldn't have come so early, but she'd wanted to make sure Chloé and the girls were set up at the Leaky, and...

And there was another train of carriages coming up now. Liz straightened a little, taking another slow draw of her _yakoç_. (She'd gotten some odd glances, smoking wasn't particularly common in magical Britain, but she'd been taking it for too long to stop without getting withdrawal symptoms — and besides, it helped with nerves.) The carriages trundled to a stop, the doors thrown open, chattering students leaping out. Even if she'd never seen Jamie's boy before — which she really hadn't, aside from a couple pictures in the _Herald_ — she would have recognised him from the impossible mess of raven-black hair, identifiable even from a distance.

She and three of her girls had the same thing, after all, as most Potters did, along with a few people in closely-related families (Fawleys, Longbottoms, Ainsleys, Atwells, and so forth). She was convinced it was a magical trait, even if she hadn't manage to isolate it yet — given how it resisted various forms of glamoury and transfiguration, there was simply no way it was natural. Flicking the stub of her _yakoç_ aside, vanishing it with a flick of her wand before it hit the ground, Liz pushed herself away from the railing, stepped away from the platform. She stood just off the footpath leading toward the high street, waiting.

And watching. Wearing muggle-style jeans and jumper, shrouded with a winter cloak, Harry was rather scrawnier than she'd expected, tall and slim. Other than the hair, he didn't look much like Father, or Dorea for that matter, must be from his mother. (Which was something of a relief, honestly, it'd probably be uncomfortable if he looked _too_ much like Father.) She was slightly surprised Harry had come alone — she'd been half-convinced Gabbie would tag along, or that he'd bring the boyfriend Black had mentioned (Bella Zabini's son, apparently?)...or that Bella Black's little clone would invite herself. He did look slightly nervous, she thought — his stature a little tense, brow dipping in a mild frown before smoothing again, over and over — but just slightly.

While the boy was still ten metres away, at the very back of the column of children walking toward her, she felt the slightest pressure at the edges of her mind — a legilimens focusing on her, not with the intent to intrude, just listening. Gabbie had mentioned he was a mind mage, of course, Black had even warned her, possibly on the assumption that she knew enough mind magic to notice his presence and might take offence. She didn't mind, though — living with veela for nearly three decades had rather significantly altered her attitudes toward privacy — she hardly even reacted, didn't move to push him away.

(She did prepare herself to repel a deeper intrusion though — she carried far too many of the People's secrets outsiders weren't to know.)

Harry let himself fall a few steps behind the rest of the students, so they had a little window of privacy when he finally walked up to her. Liz hesitated a brief moment — she'd never intended to come back to Britain, this was _very_ awkward, she had no idea what to say. Default to politeness, she could do that. (She still remembered the old forms, even if she hadn't used them in decades.) "Good day, Lord Potter."

The boy winced, glaring over at the trees in the near distance. "You don't have to call me that, _Harry_ is fine."

"I'm Liz, then."

Harry nodded. A heavy, awkward silence lingered, Liz watching the boy while he avoided her eyes, still staring off at the forest, the village behind her. Or, he _was_ actually watching her, just not with his eyes — the presence of his mind hadn't weakened at all, if anything drifting closer. But he didn't say anything, looking all the more uncomfortable as the seconds went on.

Liz cleared her throat. "I was thinking coffee." Chloé and the girls would meet them at the Leaky for lunch, of course, but that was still a couple hours away — the plan had been to bring Harry with only if this meeting went well. No use in overwhelming the boy with her family if he wasn't interested, after all.

"Oh, er..." Harry's feet shuffled. "Is there a café in Hogsmeade? The only place like that I can think of is Madam Puddifoot's, and I've heard it's kind of..."

Awful, it was awful. Kelsey had brought her there all of twice, she remembered — Liz had absolutely _hated_ it, she hadn't done as good a job of hiding it the second time, Kelsey had never suggested it again. "Merlin, is that sugary hell-hole still around? No, there's a place on Daffodil. It's been thirty years since I've been, but I'm certain it's still there." With an inviting tilt of her head and swish of her hand — being in Britain was bringing back her old manners, apparently (bloody weird) — she turned and led the way into the village, Harry a half-step behind her.

They walked for a minute or two before the silence became suffocating, Liz had to say _something_. Even if she had no bloody clue what to say. At least Harry was a legilimens, he'd be able to tell how uncomfortable she was, that would give her some leeway, hopefully. "You do know who I am, right? It occurs to me I never actually said."

"Yeah, my aunt. James's sister."

Huh, he called Jamie by his name. That was interesting — even with how poisoned her relationship with her father had been by the end, she still called him Father. It might not mean anything, she guessed, Harry probably didn't even remember Jamie. "Yes. Half-sister, technically — Dorea, Jamie's mother, was our father's second wife."

"I know, he— I mean, Lyra told me."

Liz blinked, turned to glance at him. He looked a bit shifty, avoiding her eyes again, probably hoping she wouldn't pick up on what he'd almost just let slip. It wasn't hard to figure out, Samhain had been just last week. "Did you meet Jamie at the Revel?" Normally, Witnesses couldn't have _coherent conversations_ with the Dead, but Harry was a legilimens...

His eyes going wide, he twitched, gaped at her for a moment. "You know about that? I thought the Potters were all...not into the high magic stuff, you know."

She felt her lips twitch. "I was in Slytherin — all the Slytherins know about the holiday rituals, whether they choose to attend or not. Mabon of my first year was the first time I ever participated in true ritual magic, in fact. I started going just out of curiosity, really, I wasn't convinced the Powers are real, and not just a temporary construct of the ritual itself, until...probably third year, I think." She was pretty sure she'd had her first surreal dream conversation with Áine in April of third year, but she couldn't remember precisely.

(She'd realised nearly a decade later that Áine had probably been sounding her out for recruitment as a white mage. She didn't know how to feel about that — especially since, if Áine hadn't been so subtle she hadn't understood what was going on, Liz might actually have considered it. If she had, she would never have left Britain, and never met Chloé...)

Harry looked distinctly uncomfortable, almost shivering. He was muggle-raised — and how had _that_ happened? — deep magic and the Powers were probably still new ideas to him. It _could_ take some getting used to. "Yes, I talked to James. Or his spirit or whatever." Harry stopped there, almost (but not quite) biting his lip.

Liz didn't have to ask what he was thinking, that surly, sideways glance of his was pretty telling. "Are you trying not to ask where the hell I've been all this time?"

He huffed. "Yeah, something like that. I didn't know you existed, I was told I didn't have any other family, that I had to go to..." He trailed off, glaring down at the cobblestones under their feet.

"I had no idea you were sent to live with Jamie's wife's muggle relatives." Nobody did, she assumed Dumbledore had made certain of it — she very much doubted the Wizengamot would have approved of the only remaining heir of a Noble House (and their _Boy Who Lived_) being sent off to live with common muggles. (Again, she assumed — if they were _halfway respectable_ muggles, Dumbledore would have said something.) "If I had..." Well, she _probably_ should have done something, but she wasn't actually certain she would have. Her exile from the family had already felt like so long ago by then...

"Because being stuck with _muggles_ is such a terrible thing, you mean."

Liz tried not to react to that too much — she guessed Harry had unfortunate experiences with purebloods, but it wasn't about that, really. Just... Well, she didn't think Harry had any idea how screwed he was, in the long term. There were things future Lords of the Wizengamot were taught while they were growing up that, being muggle-raised, he wouldn't have been. That lack would set him at a _serious_ disadvantage, once he was out of Hogwarts and in a position where he would be forced to try to deal with his peers. Even with competent advisors, the other Lords would run circles around him.

Bella Black — and it _was_ still odd to think the nosey little underclassman she remembered from her last couple years at Hogwarts and the infamous Lady Blackheart were the same person — hadn't been entirely wrong, when she'd tried to guilt Liz into doing something about the precarious position the House of Potter was in. No matter how many reasons she might have to be perfectly comfortable letting her birth family die, she just wasn't. Now that she was fully aware of how dire things were, she couldn't just do _nothing_.

But there was little point in explaining that just now. And Harry was probably aware of all that anyway, Bella had implied Sirius Black and her clone were educating him (however belatedly). "There are things that I was taught, growing up, Potter things — I was the heir to the title before Jamie was born, I was trained for it." No matter that she hadn't actually minded being passed up, however hard it'd been to convince Dorea of that. "Family lore and history that nobody else alive knows. I...probably should have done something, when your parents were killed." Not that it would have mattered, she doubted Dumbledore would have allowed the _Boy Who Lived_ to be taken away to grow up in a veela enclave in a foreign country...

Harry didn't react to the reminder of his parents' deaths, probably too distant to be a sensitive issue. They were passing a clump of students, moving from the high street onto Violet, they turned to sneer at Harry as they passed — Harry hardly reacted to that either, though his face did go oddly still, his shoulders rising slightly. (What was _that_ about?) Once they were alone again, Harry hesitated a brief moment, before flatly demanded, "Why didn't you?"

"That's a long, uncomfortable story."

The boy scoffed.

"I meant, I'd rather tell it sitting down, under privacy charms."

Harry winced, mumbled an apology.

The café on Daffodil was, in fact, still there, and virtually unchanged in the decades since. It was an odd little place, looking much like any other house on the lane — there had been some remodeling, the walls toward the front now more glass than wood, the only obvious indication from the outside it was anything _but_ an ordinary home the large board bolted to the patio railing with a menu painted onto it. The structure had originally been built as a house, in fact, Melanie Fenwick had converted the bottom floor into a café when her youngest son left for school. (Geoffrey Fenwick, a Ravenclaw some years older than Liz, who she mostly remembered because he'd married Bethany Sullivan, a muggleborn, straight out of Hogwarts — since she hadn't disowned him over Sullivan, some of the more annoying of her fellow Slytherins had refused to patronise Melanie's café, which had made it a convenient place to avoid them on Hogsmeade weekends.) The inside of the café — a few little tables surrounded with padded armchairs, a long counter blocking off the kitchen, newspapers and magazines stacked along it, posters and photographs hanging here and there — was mostly the same, differing only in minor details. Different photographs, the tables in slightly different places, Melanie, behind the counter kneading at a sizeable pile of dough, starting to get old enough to show — lines about her eyes and silver starting to sprout at her temples.

"Hello, dears!" she called, before the door even closed behind them. "Give me one second." She stepped way from her work table, waving her hands over an enchanted disc on a nearby pedestal — it would have an automated vanishing spell on it, Liz knew, some practising blood alchemists used a similar set-up for sanitary reasons.

Liz drifted toward the counter, Harry at her heels, and stopped dead a few steps away when she noticed one of the pictures over the counter. It was a memorial, framed with holly and everlit candles — she didn't recognise the long-faced man in the photograph, but she didn't have to, there was a label under it in silver and bronze. "Benjy died in the war?" A couple years older than Jamie, Benjy's parents had sometimes left him with Melanie, she'd seen him a few times, kicking around the café. Adorable little kid...

Standing just on the other side of the counter, Melanie's smile froze. "Yes, our Benjy was murdered by Philip Travers, back in Eighty-One."

Liz scowled — she'd heard Travers was in Azkaban now, one of the more high-profile Death Eaters, which had been _no_ surprise, bloody creep. "I'm so sorry, Melanie, I had no idea. I've been out of the country for a while, you know..."

"I'm sorry, Ma'am, but I'm not sure..." Frowning at her a little, as though trying to place her, Melanie's eyes then slid to Harry, widening a little — she clearly recognised him. "Oh! Is it little Liz Potter?!"

"It's Delacour now, actually, but yes." She smiled back at the older woman, somewhat strained — the Fenwicks were _very_ Light, tended not to like non-humans much, if she recognised the name...

Either she did or she didn't, her grin didn't dim at all. "Oh stars, it's been _ages_ since you've been by! Where have you been— No, let me get your coffee started first, and I think I have some of that cinnamon teacake you like..."

That startled a laugh out of her. "It's been thirty years, Melanie, how do you remember that?"

Her grin turning slightly crooked, she said, "You'd be surprised the things you remember about your best customers. Before I forget, Mister Potter, dear, did you want something else, or am I doubling the coffee? Liz takes it very strong, just so you know."

Harry's nose scrunched a little, apparently he was a tea drinker. Though, he seemed a bit intimidated when his request for black tea was followed up by a list of the eight different blends Melanie had on hand, he clearly had no idea which to pick — it was a little adorable, honestly, Liz tried to keep her amusement off her face. (Harry would be able to tell, of course, but she could at least avoid embarrassing him by making it obvious to Melanie.) He did choose one after a few seconds, probably at random.

"Where did you end up anyway, darling?" Melanie called over her shoulder as she brewed. "I remember reading something in the paper about you running off, but I don't think I heard anything after that."

Liz glanced at Harry, shrugged. "Ah, I'm living in Gascony these days, with my wife's family. I run an artificing shop on their property in a little village there."

"Wife? Oh, they do do that in Aquitania don't they, I quite forgot. Delacour, Delacour, that name _is_ familiar..."

She tried not to wince — this was probably going to be uncomfortable... "It's the largest veela clan in western Europe."

Melanie glanced over her shoulder. It wasn't quite so blatant as when she'd asked after Benjy, but Liz did notice her smile had gone a little cold again. "Your wife is, er..."

"Chloé is a veela, yes."

"Ah, I see."

Their conversation didn't abruptly cut off just then, but it was obvious (to Liz, at least) that Melanie was rather less enthusiastic about their little reunion than she'd been a moment ago. Liz tried not to take it _too_ personally, the woman couldn't exactly help the attitudes she'd been inundated with growing up. (Liz had been raised into it too, after all, she understood.) Harry, she noticed, was offended, rather surprisingly so, openly glaring at Melanie's back. Gabbie had mentioned (at some great length) in her letter that she and Harry had sort of hit it off, so she guessed it wasn't really _that_ surprising Harry might not look kindly on people reacting in such a way — it was the _degree_ that she hadn't anticipated, really.

Liz might not be taking it _too_ personally, but Melanie's obvious disapproval of her family was incentive enough for Liz to not censor herself when it came to her career. That shut Melanie off the rest of the way pretty well — blood alchemy was still _very_ illegal in Britain, and there were all sorts of silly superstitions around blood magic of all kinds — the woman was rather more curt than necessary setting down their tray. Cheerfully, Liz paid her, complete with a generous tip.

Entirely because she knew her generosity would make Melanie cringe — Liz had earned it with _blood magic_, after all — and her politeness would make her feel guilty. By the pained scowl on the woman's face, Liz was confident she'd achieved both.

(She'd had many disagreements with her father, but she thought he'd had the right idea when it came to the proper response to petty rudeness.)

After a short detour pointing out the different flavours of honey available — apparently Harry was completely unfamiliar with the idea of infusions, which was odd, he must not spend much time in the magical world (or just didn't pay that much attention to what he was eating, she guessed) — Liz led them off to a table in the corner. While pouring her coffee, Liz pulled out her wand, layered a few privacy charms over the table. She didn't plan on discussing anything _that_ particularly sensitive, really, she just didn't want to see her private business splashed all over the papers. She'd gotten quite enough of that as a teenager, thank you.

Liz took a sip of her coffee, frowned down at it for a second. It'd been too long, she hadn't realised the orange-infused honey the People used was rather stronger than what Melanie had on hand. But adding more of the stuff would just make it too sweet, oh well.

For a moment, neither of them said anything, Liz's finger tapping at the rim of her cup, Harry poking at his almond treacle tart. (Liz thought that was an odd thing to be having with tea, especially only an hour or two before lunch, but to each their own.) Liz considered easing into it with small talk, maybe about quidditch or something — Harry was on the Gryffindor team, right? — but, really, that would just draw out the uncomfortable bit of this whole thing, might as well get the awkward explaining shite out of the way. "Why I wasn't around, it's complicated. How much do you know about my history with the family?"

Surprisingly, Harry's brow dipped into a moody scowl — surprising because it didn't seem to be directed at her, he was still glaring at his tart. "Not much. James seemed to think you marrying a veela was enough reason to not even tell people he had a sister. Lily had no idea you existed at all."

Liz didn't quite hold in a wince — she couldn't say she was _entirely_ surprised her baby brother had seemingly decided to pretend she didn't exist, but... Yeah, that still hurt, a little. "I can't say I blame him too much. Not about Chloé, I mean, he _was_ only four when I left the country. I did write him, a little — Dorea practically ordered me to, actually — and we did meet a few times, when I was visiting. But I wasn't exactly a big presence in his life, enough... Well, I'm not really surprised."

"Why did you leave, anyway?" Now he was glaring at her, though more uncertain than angry. "Nobody's ever actually explained that, beyond, just, _ran away and married a veela_. It was too early to be about the war, wasn't it? I know Professor Lovegood left to get away from the war..."

"_Hundreds_ of people left Britain to get away from the war, but yes, I left before then. It's sort of complicated." Liz took a sip of coffee, pondering how to go about this whole thing. "Well, just start at the beginning, I guess. My mother died when I was... I'm honestly not sure, I think I might have been two? I don't remember her at all, actually, I had a few pictures and the diary she was using at the time, but that's about it." And she didn't even have those anymore, they'd been in her room at home when she'd left Britain — Dorea had sent her a photo from her parents' wedding, it was the only thing she had of either of them now.

Harry's glare vanished, leaving him staring blankly down at his tea.

"Father... They'd known each other since they were toddlers, you know, they'd been best friends for years before they married. He did not handle Mother's death well, not at all. From what I was told, after the fact, he was barely functioning for a while. I didn't see much of him, for years. I was raised largely by the elves, the humans I saw were mostly my great-uncle Lyndon — that's Lyndon Potter, your great-great-grandfather's brother — and a few Fawley and Ainsley cousins. I actually lived with Lyndon for a few years there.

"Until I turned seven." Liz paused to take another sip. It was hard to read Harry's face exactly, he'd clearly been practising his occlumency. But she got the feeling he'd softened a bit already — out of sympathy, she guessed, he obviously hadn't known his parents growing up either. "It's a tradition of sorts, in the Noble Houses, that a child's formal education starts at seven, and since I was the only Potter child I was also to be trained to take over the family, in time. That's a job for the Lord of the House. Father was mostly okay again by then, but I'd hardly seen him for years — he was practically a stranger. It was...very awkward. I remember, for months after moving back in with Father, wishing I could go back home. Home to me then was the townhouse in the Refuge, with Lyndon, I didn't even really remember my father and the Family Manor."

"There's a Potter Manor?"

Liz blinked at him, too dumbfounded to speak for a second. "I— _Of course_ there is! Harry, _every_ noble family has one. Have you...never been there?"

Harry shot her a mulish glare, but she didn't buy it, he was shifting in his seat too much — almost guiltily, which was silly, he couldn't be held responsible for people _not telling him things_, even when they really, _really_ should. "Well, _I_ don't know, nobody ever told _me_ this noble family shite. I know about the house in Godric's Hollow, but..."

"_I_ don't know about a house in Godric's Hollow, Jamie and your mother probably bought that themselves. It certainly isn't the Manor. The point of them is to have somewhere the _entire family_ can gather if they need to, for special occasions or emergencies — the House of Potter may be tiny now, but it wasn't always, there's no way any house in Godric's Hollow is large enough."

"Like Ancient House?" he asked, frowning to himself.

"Yes, exactly like Ancient House, that's the Blacks'." Though, Ancient House was rather less defensible than family manors tended to be — _physically_, that is, the wards there were absurd — but it hadn't originally been built for the purpose. The first Black Family Manor had been Château Blanc, which was _much_ more defensible, though the family had outgrown it by the 12th Century or so. But that was rather off topic. "The Potters' is called Rock-on-Clyde, looking over the River Clwyd in Wales. I can show you later."

Though, she realised, it might actually be a little tedious to get there. She doubted the floo connection had been maintained, and she _probably_ wasn't keyed into the wards anymore. (They should still recognise her as a Potter, blood-based wards were hard to tweak like that, but she'd probably been removed from the table of exemptions from the anti-apparation ward.) They'd probably have to apparate to the river, and walk all the way up...

"Anyway, it was very frustrating for the both of us, getting reacquainted, my relationship with my father probably wasn't as good as it could have been. It didn't help that, a couple years later, he overcompensated making sure I was comfortable with his marriage with Dorea. I think, he expected me to be jealous, or something, and didn't really believe me when I said I didn't mind. I _liked_ Dorea — when you're nine years old, and you find adults who don't talk down to you like you're a stupid child, those are the adults you tend to like, you know."

Harry's lips twitched with an involuntary smirk.

"Not long after that, Lyndon died — I was devastated, and Father was...kind of annoyed about it."

Frowning, Harry said, "Why would he be annoyed about that?" By the twist to his lips, Liz thought Harry was making a judgement on Father's character that wasn't _entirely_ fair. Liz wouldn't claim her father had been _perfect_, obviously, not by any means, but...

But, well, she didn't _entirely_ disagree, when it came to this particular issue, it took her a moment to decide how to explain as charitably as possible. "To be fair, I think he was... I'm not certain 'jealous' is quite the right word. Yes, I was miserable and useless for a little while, which did interfere with our scheduled lessons, but it wasn't about that, really. I think he felt I was...too much a dutiful daughter in mourning — at that point, in some ways, Lyndon had still been more a father to me than your grandfather. He never really said or did anything about it, I assume because he was aware that he was at least partially responsible for that happening in the first place, but it was...awkward for a while, again.

"And then, before things could get back to normal between us, I was leaving for Hogwarts. And was Sorted into Slytherin."

"I'm guessing he wasn't happy about that," Harry said, sounding rather resigned.

"Not particularly. Is that stupid Slytherin–Gryffindor rivalry still going on?"

He lifted one shoulder in a shrug, the hand not holding his tea giving an ambivalent wiggle. "It depends, I guess? Some people take it much too seriously, and some people just don't care. I might have bought into it a little myself, at first," he mumbled, a little exasperated with himself. "I mean, I was never as bad about it as some people? Which, in retrospect, I was still being _very_ stupid — the Hat wanted to put me in Slytherin, you know, I asked for Gryffindor."

"Oh, it actually listened to you? I asked for Hufflepuff, damn thing put me in Slytherin anyway." It'd taken a bit to decide between Slytherin and Ravenclaw, brushing off Hufflepuff with little more than a _that's nice, dear_.

"It can do that? Dumbledore told me the Hat's supposed to take your choices into account."

"If you're sufficiently suited to the house you're asking for, perhaps, but it didn't listen to me."

With a rather thoughtful look, Harry nodded. "Anyway, I'd kind of been told all Slytherins were evil, basically, and there's this kid in my year, Draco Malfoy, he's a complete arse, and I kind of just...assumed the rest of the Slytherins were all like him. I hardly even talked to any others until last year, and then only because they were Lyra's friends. Which, stupid, I _was_ supposed to be one myself, and I'm even a parselmouth and everything."

"Really? I hadn't heard about that." And she really thought she would have — the Boy Who Lived having an _evil dark wizard_ trait like parseltongue was the kind of thing she'd expect to be sensationalisted in the _Prophet_. "Your mother must be from a squib line."

"That's what she said when I talked to her at the Samhain ritual, yeah." Harry paused, glanced around for a second, as though making sure nobody was paying them too much attention. (Which was a little silly, she had privacy spells up.) Leaning over the table a little, "The thing is, Dumbledore said, at the end of second year, that I got parseltongue from Riddle — er, the Dark Lord, I mean. That, when he got blown up, some of his magic ended up being transferred over to me. Even Sirius assumed something like that must have happened."

It wasn't a question, but it was pretty clear what he was asking. Shaking her head, Liz said, "No, that's not possible. Parseltongue is a blood-mediated trait. To give you parseltongue, Voldemort would have needed to perform a blood alchemy ritual — using his own blood, or that of another parselmouth. It's not a particularly _difficult_ ritual, I could do it myself given about an hour of preparation, but it's something that must be done consciously. I don't know what happened that night, but I can't imagine it was anything that could have carried over a blood-mediated trait of any kind." That didn't seem like a surprise to Harry, though he was frowning — wondering why the Chief Warlock had told him something so _obviously_ false, she assumed. Not that Liz had any ideas, that _was_ odd.

Liz frowned. "Wait, did you just say Voldemort's real name is _Riddle_?" She'd heard Thom de Mort, one of Candidus Malfoy's old friends, had become the Dark Lord. Everyone had known that was an assumed name, but it was thought he was a bastard from a French noble family — _Riddle_ that was _not_ a pureblood name...

Harry's eyes widened a little. "Ah, you were talking about Slytherin?"

That was a _pathetically_ obvious deflection, but she could humour him — Voldemort was dead and gone, the possibility that he'd maybe been _muggleborn_ didn't really matter anymore, did it. "Yes, that. You're right, my father wasn't particularly happy about it. It wasn't a _serious_ problem, it just gave him some political difficulties with the rest of the Light. It didn't help that he was marrying Dorea — the Blacks being _the fire at the heart of the Dark_ and all that nonsense, you know, they have a reputation in the Light. Although, it's not actually unusual for people from some of the more extreme Dark families to marry into the Light — in just the generation before Dorea, you had one Black marry a Prewett and another marry a _Weasley_, of all people — and the Light tend to see this as a good thing, that these people are _escaping from the depravities of the Dark_. Most of that is nonsense, of course, the Dark isn't _nearly_ as bad as the Light claim, but Father was betrothed to a Black, and at the same time his only child is Sorted into Slytherin... People talked, and he was a bit annoyed about it. He wasn't _angry_ with me, exactly, only a little..._displeased_, but that just made our already rocky relationship a little bit more...distant and awkward.

"And then a couple years later, Jamie was born. Internal House Potter law prioritises inheritance along the male line, like most Light families — now that my father had a son, I wasn't the heir anymore." There was a flicker across Harry's brow, Liz added, "I didn't mind so much. It was something of a relief, actually. I was a...troubled child, kind of, and, if I'm being honest, all the responsibilities attendant to being the future Lady Potter hanging over my head all the time, were...intimidating. It made things simpler.

"The important thing about it for this conversation is that no longer being the heir meant my lessons with your grandfather — mostly just meetings by that point, discussing our family's affairs — they were done with. Which meant we spent rather less time together. Which meant our still rather shaky relationship was never given opportunity to recover."

Liz drained the rest of her cup, poured herself another from the pot on their tray — it was still steaming, good, the warming charms on the pot were working properly. (She couldn't dismiss out of hand the possibility Melanie might have given her a broken one as an intentional snub.) Stirring in a spoon of honey, Liz said, "The point I'm trying to get at, Harry, is that there wasn't that much keeping me here in the first place. Not personally, anyway. Sure, I had nowhere _else_ to go, and no way to provide for myself besides, and I'd been taught to mind my responsibilities to the Family, but so far as actual, personal relationships go? The man who'd had the most direct hand in raising me had died years ago, and the elves had retreated as I aged. My relationship with my father was distant and awkward, and always had been. I got on with my stepmother just fine, but we weren't especially close either. My brother was too young to really have a relationship with, and I was away at Hogwarts, so I didn't see him much anyway. I had a few cousins I'd known growing up, but we weren't very close, mostly casual friendships at school.

"And then there was Kelsey." Liz paused, drawing out a sip of coffee much longer than necessary, working over how to explain this next bit. It didn't help that Harry had been muggle-raised, and she wasn't certain how aware he was of how these sort of things generally worked. She did have _some_ practice in explaining it to uninformed people, from her time on the Continent, but... "Well, marriages in the nobility are mostly arranged, you know. This was actually the norm all around the world, once upon a time. The concept of a love marriage is far more modern than many people realise — the institution of marriage developed as a means of organising familial hierarchies and controlling wealth, the rest of the cultural trappings around it came later. It isn't as though a permanent, formalised union is _necessary_ to produce and raise children, after all." The People, in fact, had developed their own traditions concerning family and childrearing parallel to human society, ones that had no institution equivalent to marriage — a small minority married outsiders, but they never married amongst themselves. "There's a courtship culture the British nobility have, I don't know how familiar you are with this. It's expected that teenagers will experiment with sex and relationships — even encouraged, in a way — sometimes as part of the whole courtship game, and sometime entirely separate from it. It's not unusual to be courting with multiple people, while also 'dating' someone else, or multiple someones. These categories may or may not overlap, it depends."

It was hard to tell for sure, but Harry didn't _seem_ particularly confused. She assumed this wasn't _entirely_ new information for him. Both Harry and Bella's little clone were about the proper age to start thinking seriously about courting — Black had probably mentioned something about it at some point — and if nothing else he probably had friends who were on the market, or maybe even betrothed already. Finalising an arrangement at fourteen would be seen as sort of...overeager, but fifteen was prime courtship age. Harry seemed slightly exasperated, she thought, but not as though he was unfamiliar with the idea.

"Anyway, it didn't take me very long to realise I didn't really like boys much. Or not in the same way I did girls — I had male friends, of course, and I tried dating a couple, it was just...different. Which, that was fine, it just makes the whole courtship thing a little more complicated. After all, it's not everyone who'd be happy marrying someone who might get along with them just fine, sure, but has absolutely no interest in shagging them." That and it could make the act itself rather unpleasant, for both parties, but there were potions that helped, and they were needed often enough they weren't too hard to get. (She'd tried them herself, actually, they worked as one _hell_ of an aphrodisiac for people who already were attracted to each other.)

Harry had huffed a little at that last bit. At her raised eyebrow, he hesitated a moment, his lips quirking, before letting out a sigh. "I'm seeing this bloke, Blaise, he's...well, not _engaged_, but _engaged-to-be-engaged_, I guess, to this girl Daphne, who's like that. I mean, totally gay, not interested in blokes at all. Apparently, she can get a bit protective of, ah, their arrangement, because finding someone else who's as cool as Blaise is about it might be difficult. I've gotten stuck in multiple conversations about the whole thing."

"Ah, yes, that makes sense." Liz bit the inside of her lip, consciously forced herself to stop. It wasn't _really_ her business, but if something untoward were going on, she should really do something... "Excuse me, this may seem...intrusive, but, you're seeing this Blaise fellow, and Gabbie wrote to me, and it sounded sort of like..."

Unfortunately, it didn't look like Harry understood what she was getting at. "Like what?"

Liz bit back a sigh. "Ah, hell, I'm just going to say it straight. Did you like girls before Gabbie came along?"

"_What_?" Harry had been raising his cup, he practically slammed it back to the table, tea slopping over to pool in his saucer. "Of _course_ I— Well, I'm _pretty_ sure—" He huffed, glaring at the ceiling for a second. "I'm a legilimens, you know, I can feel the veela magic happen and stop it if I want to, pretty easily, actually. She hasn't done anything to me."

It took some effort for Liz to keep her surprise from showing — of course, Harry would know what she was feeling anyway, but it was still just polite. (Being in Britain was bringing out the old instincts, it was _weird_.) The People's emotional compulsions were actually _very_ sneaky, many mind mages had trouble dealing with them. Not all of them, by any means, some mind mages were more powerful than others, and some more practised with it. Gabbie's friend Arte Cæciné, for example, she'd been in close proximity with them at Beauxbatons for years before her abilities properly kicked in, she'd adapted to managing their influence very quickly. Mind mages who first came into contact with the People later in life tended to have more trouble with it.

Of course, she could tell Harry was a rather powerful mage, for his age, enough he'd almost certainly be a proper sorcerer given time. (That was disproportionately frequent in half-bloods from old pureblood lines, she'd noticed.) A power advantage _did_ help, yes. There was also a familiar echo to his magic, she'd assumed a lingering trace of the Samhain ritual he'd attended not long ago, but if he was actually god-touched... Well, _that_ would help too, wouldn't it.

For a brief second, Liz considered asking after that. But no, it wasn't really her business, and she hardly knew enough about Harry's personal situation to even have much to tell him.

Right. "I apologise, I didn't mean to..." She wasn't certain what to say — she _had_ meant to imply what she had, it just sounded worse than it was. "Gabbie is still very young, you know, it's not impossible she could do something to someone without even realising she's doing it. I thought I should check, just in case."

"Yes, well, it's fine, I don't need to be protected from her or anything."

"No offence, Harry, but if I were to do something about it, it'd be to protect her."

He blinked. "What?"

Before explaining, she took a sip of her coffee, covering her twitching lips with her cup. "If she had done something to compel you to be infatuated with her, the compulsion itself would be relatively harmless, and would quickly wear off. If people found out a foreign dark creature had used evil dark magic to ensnare the Boy Who Lived, well, they might overreact. If I were to do something, it would be to get my niece somewhere she would be safe before anything happened to her."

Harry scowled — not at her, she didn't think, but at those faceless _people_. "You're probably not wrong about that," he grumbled, voice thick with irritation and frustration.

"I did grow up in the British Light, Harry. I know what they're like."

He let out another irritated huff, but he dropped the topic. "You were talking about courtship stuff."

Liz fought to hold in another smirk. "Yes, well," she stalled, trying to remember where exactly she'd been and where she'd been going. "Oh, I was just about to talk about how I ended up actually leaving the country. And that whole debacle starts with Kelsey. Kelsey Prewett — or, Kelsey _Bletchley_ now, I guess — is a distant cousin, but we hadn't actually met until we were both Sorted into Slytherin the same year. We started dating around Christmas our fifth year. The whole courtship game had been just sort of tedious already, but it only got _more_ complicated when...

"Well, when we fell in love — the overwhelming, completely _stupid_ for each other kind of love. By sixth year, we were together as much as possible. And when I had to go on... The whole idea of 'dating' actually developed in the muggle world over the last couple centuries out of old courtship customs, there are some cosmetic similarities. Especially where _going on dates_ is concerned, though there are significant differences in the tone and the intent of the thing. It was annoying before, but after getting serious with Kelsey I _hated_ it. I couldn't help comparing them to her in my head, and knowing I'd be marrying one of them, or someone else down the line, I'd be stuck with them for the rest of my life, that I _couldn't_ be with Kelsey, and I resented them all for it. It was unpleasant."

It was sort of unpleasant just _talking_ about it, even thirty years later. Harry might have been picking up on that, or just the idea itself was enough, his lips twisting into a grimace. "Couldn't you have just...not? I mean, if I understand this stuff right, it wasn't like you were the heir anymore. You didn't really _need_ to."

Liz let out a sigh. "Theoretically? No, it wasn't necessary. But _politically_, it was...complicated. It would make things _far_ more difficult for my father, and Jamie after him, if I never married. And, well, it's _what you do_. To most of the nobility, the idea of, just, _not marrying_ is completely unthinkable — not necessarily because we really _want_ to, but simply because it's expected, it's an important part of the culture we're raised in. In fact, the idea hadn't _really_ occurred to me, not at first. I just thought, the idea of marrying any of these _particular_ boys was repulsive. And they were, boring and annoying. I thought my father just had to get his head of his arse and try to set me up with better options.

"I kept running off suitors on purpose. Either I'd just make it _very_ clear I didn't like them, I wasn't interested — which is actually quite rude, I only did that with the ones I felt were _especially_ unacceptable — or I'd say things good boys from upstanding Light families found objectionable. By that point, my Dark friends in Slytherin had brought me around when it came to some things, mostly the practise of certain magics, ritual and such. I was already studying blood magic by then, not seriously, just out of curiosity — Dorea's mother was not-so-secretly a blood alchemist, she'd managed to get a few interesting books into my hands over the years. Just casually talking about dabbling in the Dark Arts in your free time, yeah, that sent half of them running pretty quick.

"It wasn't until the summer after sixth year when I decided I was done. I'd just had a particularly bad meeting with..." Liz trailed off, frowning to herself. "Huh, I don't even remember who it was. In any case, he was _un_—" At the last second, she realised she was about to say something _very_ vulgar, bit her lip to cut herself off...except, it would have been in Gascon, so it wasn't like Harry would have understood it anyway. Oops. "Ah, it didn't go well. I nearly hexed him, actually. I went home and told my father I was done, I wasn't doing it anymore. I wasn't going to marry, and there was nothing he could say to convince me otherwise."

Harry looked vaguely amused, probably realised she'd almost slipped there for a moment. Or, actually, the smirking had started with her talking about scaring off _good boys from upstanding Light families_, so a combination of things, maybe. But his eyes narrowed in trepidation, the beginning of a frown. "Your father didn't like that, I'm guessing."

"No, not at all. We had a _terrible_ row. And, as awkward as things might have been between us, we'd never yelled at each other before, or anything like that. It... Well, it was kind of awful, actually. We were fighting constantly that summer, being able to leave for Hogwarts was a bit of a relief."

An odd, almost painful look had taken over Harry's face. She wasn't quite certain how to read that.

"We traded letters some, that fall. He even showed up on a Hogsmeade weekend once, cornered me to have it out again, tried to talk me around. I was with Kelsey too, that was just..._extremely_ awkward. Around the beginning of December, he sent me a letter to the effect that, if I continued to stubbornly refuse to consent to a proper marriage, I shouldn't come home. Not for Christmas, not ever. That I should consider myself cast out of the family until I changed my mind."

It probably shouldn't be surprising, but Liz was still a little blindsided by just how angry Harry looked, his brow dipping into a very obvious glare. His voice hissing a little, he said, "He, just, just for _that_? He kicked you out of the family because you wouldn't marry a boy he liked?"

"Eh?" Liz wiggled a hand in the air. That just seemed to make Harry confused. "Well, it's more complicated than just, I didn't marry a particular man. I'd turned down _dozens_ by that point, and I was refusing to even keep looking for a husband — to even _pretend_ to play the courtship game anymore. That was very impolitic, if nothing else. And, he never confirmed this, but I don't think he expected to actually need to follow through on it. I think, he thought if he just laid down the law, made it clear how serious he was about this, I'd give in. Or at least, we could talk about it, and come to some kind of compromise. That it might be a while, that I might run off to a friend's house or something, that it might have been _years_ before we could come to an agreement. I don't think he expected me to actually _leave_.

"_I_ didn't expect to leave. It was sort of...spur of the moment. It was the start of the holiday, and on the carriage ride to the station I mentioned, you know, thoughts for what we'd be doing over the holiday, and... I hadn't said anything before, about going home with Kelsey. It wouldn't have been the first time, I'd gone to hers for Easter holidays before, it didn't...seem like something we needed to talk about ahead of time. It was a given.

"Except, Kelsey had gotten a letter from home, the day before. She hadn't said anything, she didn't think it would matter. I was packing, and _I_ hadn't said anything, so she...assumed I'd caved to my father's ultimatum, that I was going home. Her family said I wasn't welcome with them anymore, that she couldn't bring me home with her. We had a..._confusing_ fight, right out there in the open, on the trail to the station. She got on the train, and I watched it pull away." Liz took a slow sip of her coffee. "I never spoke to her again."

And she did kind of regret that still, a little bit. Kelsey had even written her several times, in those first few months, but Liz had never replied. Like a bloody coward. They hadn't _technically_ broken up, after all, Liz had just abruptly left the country, and she... She hadn't known what to say. She hadn't wanted it to be over, even while knowing it was, that she couldn't, that she _wouldn't_ go back. Now that she was in Britain again, part of her wanted to see her. Not to _do_ anything — their relationship was _long_ dead by now — but just to... She didn't know. See how Kelsey was doing, catch up, and all that.

Say she was sorry, for running off. Though she wasn't, really, but maybe she could have gone about it better...

She wasn't going to. As much as part of her might _want_ to talk to her again, she knew it wasn't really a good idea. It'd just be...awkward. How the hell would she even start that conversation? And that was assuming Kelsey would even agree to meet her, she wasn't at all certain she would. It just wasn't worth it.

"So I left." Liz shrugged. "I don't remember what I was thinking, exactly, I'm not certain I was thinking much at all. I just, I couldn't go home, and I couldn't think where else to go. I just..._left_. I took the floo to London, and then to Brittany, and I apparated to Paris, and... I didn't have anywhere in mind, really. I stepped out into the crowd and just...wandered. I had a few galleons on me, I sold the clothes and the jewelry I had in my trunk for a couple more. For a year or two, I drifted around the Continent, taking odd jobs here and there — freelance enchanting and menial labour, mostly.

"After the gold I started with ran out, would have been around March or April of Sixty-Five, I was actually living on the street for a couple months. Not that that's hard to do with magic, just a few softening and warming charms, a couple palings to keep pests away, it's comfortable enough. I was working in the muggle world at the time, actually, under the table at a restaurant in Tolosa — I hadn't the documentation to work legitimately in the muggle world then, it was off the books. The magical world is much smaller, and we have _magic_, obviously, so there tends to be less work available, sometimes something in the muggle world was my only option. But it wasn't always enough to feed myself and also pay for a place to sleep. I suppose I could have gotten a room in a hotel easily enough, compelling the muggles to forget I hadn't paid them, but I was worried I might get in trouble with the local magical government. You can get away with that in Britain, but I didn't know how close attention the Continental governments paid."

"And you didn't go back? I mean..." Harry hesitated for a second, his fingers idly playing with his empty tea cup. "You could have, just, done what your father wanted, and gone back to live in a bloody _manor_, at any time, and you chose to literally _be homeless_ instead?" It was hard to tell for certain, but Harry almost seemed... 'Impressed' wasn't quite the right word, she didn't think. That she would stick to her principles, no matter how difficult it was, when she could have just surrendered and lived in comfort, he was surprised she'd gone that far, she thought, in the good way.

Even if he was giving her rather too much credit. "I couldn't go back anymore, really. Well, I _could_, I guess, but... A couple weeks in, when I didn't show up back at Hogwarts, my father realised something was wrong — I think he assumed I was staying at a friend's, and he simply hadn't heard where. A few letters back and forth, and he went from worried, to confused, to absolutely furious. I was disinherited by February. It wasn't just about agreeing to a marriage now, by the time my money problems got _really_ bad I was already exiled from the family — and it'd been in the papers, _everybody_ knew about it — so I would have had to go to my father and _beg_ him to take me back. I was just too proud to do that, I guess. Even when I was literally sleeping in an alley in a muggle city, I was still too proud to beg my father to take me back, I just couldn't."

"That seems..." Harry chewed on his lip for a moment, staring at his empty cup. He startled into motion, moving to refill it, even as he started slowly talking. "Maybe I still just don't know about these things, but that seems...really awful and stupid. I don't mean you!" he blurted out, eyes flicking away from his tea up to hers for a second. "I mean, your father, just... I don't know about all this noble family stuff, it's still new to me. But, isn't the whole point of them, really, to take care of the family and all that? How is throwing your daughter out to _live on the street_ doing that, exactly? Sirius or Lyra would _never_ do that."

Liz almost had to laugh. "Yes, well, they're _Blacks_, aren't they? Blacks have a reputation for a..._zealous_ loyalty to their family." Less so in recent centuries, of course, but the idea had been cemented in the culture of the nobility long ago. "But they wouldn't hesitate any longer than my father did to cast out a blood-traitor." And it wasn't like her father had had any idea she'd ended up _living on the street_ for a little while anyway, he might have done differently if he had, that was quite beside the point.

Actually, she wouldn't be surprised if he'd been assuming she'd ended up in a brothel or something. That _had_ been an option, and a relatively tempting one, all things considered — if nothing else, she wouldn't have had to worry about keeping a roof over her head — but she hadn't really considered it. It had seemed distasteful, especially given _why_ she'd left Britain in the first place — refusing to allow her father to sell her to one of his friends' sons only to sell herself to complete strangers had just felt...wrong.

Harry opened his mouth, annoyed, Liz cut over him, "I mean in the original sense of the word, Harry, a traitor to one's family. Depending on how strict you are in the definition of the term, what I did — refusing to do what the Lord of the House told me, especially something so culturally and socially and financially important — could easily apply. In fact, most of the nobility of this country who remember who I am _still_ consider me a blood-traitor."

Harry scowled, very much unimpressed with this explanation. Stirring his tea, he muttered, "Fine, I still think it's stupid."

"I don't disagree, but it was really a good thing for me in the end, that he disinherited me when he did." Liz smiled at the boy's confused frown. "Eventually, I managed to save up enough money to take the Proficiency exams — equivalent to the NEWTs, most ICW countries use the same standard. Something in my paperwork must have set off red flags, because before I knew it I was being interviewed by the Aquitanian government, and suddenly I was given refugee status, access to public housing and a stipend for personal expenses. There's no equivalent to that sort of programme in Britain, I had no idea it existed, or I might have looked into it earlier. But, if my father hadn't disinherited me, I wouldn't have qualified, so it turned out to be a perverse sort of lucky break, if you think about it."

Though Liz _had_ been almost offended over it at the time. Not her father disinheriting her, she'd been expecting that — _dreading_ it, really — but the evaluation of the Commonwealth. The Office of Migration and Resettlement, which she hadn't even known existed before receiving a request to meet with them, had determined that she had fled to Aquitania to escape a forced marriage, which they considered grounds for refugee status (and eventual full citizenship). She didn't think that was accurate, and had actually been a bit irritated when it'd been explained to her. It wasn't like she'd been being forced to marry a particular man, just...economically _coerced_ to marry _someone_, _in general_, which she didn't feel was the same thing. She hadn't liked the implications, really, it'd made her feel kind of...

She hadn't argued the point, she _had_ needed the help. She just hadn't liked it.

(Though she kept her feelings about it to herself. If serving as a poster girl for the Programme for the Resettlement and Naturalisation of Refugees and Stateless Persons could ultimately do some good for more vulnerable people now and in the future, especially given the increasingly fragile state of Secrecy, well, she could swallow her own discomfort with the label.)

"Anyway, I ended up in the Mastery programme in Artifice at Beauxbatons, paid for by the Aquitanian government." Which had actually been a bit embarrassing, if she was being honest. She'd grown up in the Noble House of Potter, okay, raised in wealth and social power, being reduced to a charity case — cheap, often second-hand clothing, living in a modest flat in a rent-free public housing block, her tuition covered by a government scholarship intended for refugees with potentially useful skills, taking most of her meals at a dining hall at the school because it was covered and she didn't have the cash to eat anywhere else... She'd felt like everyone was watching her, that they _knew_ (which many had, of course), it'd been _humiliating_. She'd gotten over herself eventually, it'd just taken a while. "In Sixty-Eight, I attended a public conference on medical alchemy, where I met Chloé. And that went as you might expect."

Harry smiled, a bit crookedly, probably making some assumptions of how that went that weren't entirely accurate — at least, if he were thinking of his meeting Gabbie, which by the sound of it had gone much better than Liz getting to know Chloé. As she'd told him before, she _had_ grown up in the British Light, and at the time she'd still had some...unfortunate ideas about veela. She hadn't actually known what Chloé was at first, when she'd found out she'd made sort of an arse of herself. It'd turned out well, of course — Chloé hadn't held Liz's not-yet-entirely-abandoned prejudices against her, because she was a bloody angel or something, honestly — it just hadn't gone nearly as smoothly at the beginning as Harry likely imagined.

"We married in Nineteen Seventy. And, in my happy naïveté, I thought it was a brilliant idea to invite my father, Dorea, and Jamie to the wedding. When he found out I was marrying not only a woman, but a _veela_, I was promptly disowned." Funnily enough, Dorea had actually shown up, Liz's _stepmother_ was the only member of her family who'd actually met Chloé. She'd come with all these apologies for Father, that she'd tried to talk him out of disowning her, but there was nothing she could do. Chloé had rather liked her, it'd been her idea to name Doriane (half) after her — and Dorea had come to Gascony to visit, she was the only Potter to ever see any of their girls. Jamie hadn't even replied to her letter informing him he was an uncle. (She hadn't bothered writing Father, he'd made his opinion on Chloé quite clear.) Which was sort of tragically funny, really, the only Potter she'd been on speaking terms with by the end was the only one she wasn't actually related to.

That bit got a pretty impressive scowl, again. It occurred to Liz that Harry was probably going to come away with a rather negative impression of what his grandfather had been like, which was...probably not entirely fair. He hadn't been a _bad_ man, certainly not, just very much a product of his time and his social class — and when it came to Liz's history with him, well, he couldn't be blamed for much of that, really, too many factors had been outside his control. She couldn't help feeling a little bad about that, but she didn't think there was anything she could do about it. (And she knew Chloé would say she was still making excuses for him out of a misplaced sense of filial shame, so...) Anyway, Harry's disdain eventually broke with a frown of confusion. "Wait, I thought he'd already disowned you."

"He _disinherited_ me back in Sixty-Five, he didn't _disown_ me until Nineteen Seventy. They're not the same thing. When someone is disinherited, it means they no longer have access to family properties — housing, bank accounts, whatever arrangements with whatever outside institutions, none of that sort of thing — but they're still a member of the family. Or, a _partial_ member of the family, anyway. When the Lord of the House _disowns_ someone, they're cutting all ties, permanently. Your godfather, Sirius Black, as I understand it he was disinherited as a teenager, but had remained a Black, so he could still take over as Lord of the House once there was nobody left to contest him. But, if you're disowned, it's as though you were never a member of the family in the first place. If I wanted to be a Potter again, you couldn't just acknowledge me as such, I'd have to be formally adopted into the family, like any outsider.

"So, as I was saying, by the time Jamie died in Eighty-One, I hadn't been a Potter for over ten years, and I hadn't lived in the country for nearly twenty. I was about as estranged from my family here as it is possible to be — hell, my own brother forbid me from attending Father and Dorea's funeral." Harry scowled some more, almost sick with disdain, maybe she shouldn't have said that... "I didn't know you existed at all, Harry, until I read about what happened that Samhain in the newspapers.

"Quite honestly, the idea that I should...maybe do something, that I might have some responsibility to you... It just didn't occur to me," she admitted, lifting one shoulder in a shrug. "It probably should have, but... I'd been Lise Delacour for over a decade by then, I had my work and my own family. Britain and the House of Potter had seemed, just, so very far away from me. I regret, now, that I didn't, but." She shrugged again.

Harry stared at her for a long, silent moment, with that expressionless, thoughtful face that was almost characteristic of mind mages in its blankness, Liz felt. After maybe twenty seconds he let out a sigh. He looked down as he spoke, fiddling with his tea. "It's fine, I get it. Probably more than I thought I would, honestly."

"Oh?"

He winced, shifting in his chair a little. "Ah, I grew up with Lily's sister's family. And they were...not so good. I actually used to imagine, sometimes, a relative of my father's showing up and taking me out of there. I mean, I never heard anything about his family, I had no idea whether there were any around or not. When I was a little kid I would, you know, dream about it, someone coming."

Liz tried to prevent herself from showing any reaction to that at all.

"That actually did sort of happen, if you think about it? I mean, I _don't_ live there anymore, because of Lyra and Sirius, I haven't even seen the Dursleys for over a year now, and they _are_ cousins through the Potters, so. But, I just thought... Like, after I've been here in the magical world for ages, if something happened to the Dursleys, and Dudley had a little kid that had nowhere to go... I really don't think I'd step up to do anything about it. It probably wouldn't even occur to me as an option."

"It's not really..." Liz didn't know exactly what his life with these Dursleys had been like, but if he was praying for some complete stranger to sweep in and rescue him, it _probably_ hadn't been very pleasant. It wasn't really the same thing, her history with the Potters. But, the more she thought about it, the less the distinction really seemed to matter. After all, sure, her home life might not have been quite so bad as Harry's — estranged and awkward, yes, but far short of abusive, or even truly neglectful — but she had effectively been pushed away by her father, so effectively she'd _left the country_. And she assumed this Dudley probably hadn't explicitly told Harry he never wanted anything more to do with him ever the way Jamie had her. So, while her relationship with her family might be _less_ bad than Harry's with these Dursleys, in other ways it might actually be worse. Quibbling about such minor distinctions would really be quite pointless.

"I know it's not the same thing," Harry said, brushing off the argument she'd never actually gotten around to making. "It doesn't really have to be, that's not the point. I get it, is what I'm saying. I'm not annoyed with you for staying away or anything. It's fine."

For some reason, Liz thought she should feel more relieved than she did.

* * *

[_yakoç_] — _The word veela/lilin use for a drug popular in some magical communities from the eastern Mediterranean through the Pacific, a relative of kava processed into something that can be smoked. (Non-smokable versions would be called something else.)_

_omg I am such a wordy bitch..._

_So, apparently there's this big thing on THE TWITTERZ about JKR being a huge transphobe, and how omg people maybe Harry Potter was written by a BAD PERSON?! Which...yes, obviously? Are you just realising this now? I mean, you did notice all the racism and misogyny in the original work, right? Seriously, the goblins are a super-obvious anti-semitic trope, and her treatment of pretty much **any** foreign character is just awful, and... You get the picture. I mean, this isn't news, people xD_

_Right, next chapter in a couple days. —Lysandra_


	34. Families are Hard

Harry still didn't know how to feel about all this. By this point, he'd pretty much decided he wouldn't ever figure it out. Not today, at least.

It was maybe a kind of depressing thing to think (which was why he didn't say these things out loud), but he wasn't entirely sold on this whole family concept. He meant, he did _get_ it, theoretically. Well, sort of — it depended somewhat on whose idea of 'family' they were talking about here. How _ordinary_ people tended to think about their families, Harry sometimes found that really squishy and fuzzy and confusing. All mixed up feelings and memory and ideas about _what should be_, and it was a whole bunch of vague undefined things layered on top of each other over years, and he wasn't entirely sure how it _worked_.

Which, that was fine, he didn't need to know how it worked. He hardly _ever_ knew how things worked, and he still _did_ them — and it wasn't like these were _his_ families he was talking about, so that he didn't understand how they worked didn't really matter. But, that they _weren't_ his made it all the more alien, if that made sense? Like, say, magic, he didn't get how magic worked, but he could still _do_ it, so that was fine, but he _didn't_ do normal families, so it was still weird.

(If that made sense, he wasn't certain it did.)

See, both the Dursleys and the Blacks had explicit rules for how the family worked, in a way Harry didn't think other families tended to. The Dursleys, he thought that was mostly because they'd just been trying to control Harry as much as possible, but the Blacks, he had the feeling that was because too many of them were like Lyra and Sirius — _completely fucking mad_, all of the time. They needed the rules to tell them what they should be doing at any given moment, because the vague, fuzzy, undefined layers of normal people relationships were, just, not even a thing to them.

As completely _mad_ as that might sound, Harry could at least _understand_ that. The Blacks were just constitutionally fucked up in a way that had not been quite obvious to him before this summer, but it wasn't hard to figure out how the family worked from the outside. There were rules, clear and obvious ones.

Harry had _thought_ needing explicit rules in order to know how people were supposed to behave with their own family — as Sirius had clearly indicated the Blacks did, with his flood of memories during that rant on Hallowe'en — was kind of weird...but the Delacours _didn't_ do that, and Harry had absolutely no idea what he was supposed to be doing with himself, and this was just kind of awkward.

Not _bad_, really. Just awkward.

He thought Liz was fine, so far, as uncomfortable as talking to her had been at first. It had been kind of uncomfortable just _looking_ at her, really. Even if he hadn't known who she was, he might have guessed they were related at a glance, especially having just seen James at the weird Hallowe'en ritual thing — her face was rather rounder, her eyes rather lighter, more of a pale greyish-blue, but they did look pretty similar. And there was her hair, of course, apparently the Potter Hair was _a thing_, she kept it short because it was just as much an impossible mess as his was. (He was told his hair was magic, which probably should have been a surprise, but it _really_ wasn't.) But she was...fine, he guessed.

His brand new aunt he'd never met before, as random as it sounded, actually kind of reminded him of an older, calmer Hermione. In the bookish, magic-nerd kind of way — after getting through the _where have you been all this time_ conversation, Liz had talked about her work a little bit, and Harry had only understood maybe every other word — but also in the very intense, sometimes unnervingly ruthless kind of way. She'd made excuses for herself, that she hadn't really had a choice, but Harry didn't buy it, she _could_ have given her father (Harry's grandfather had apparently been a _huge bastard_, which was vaguely disappointing) what he wanted and gone back home at any time, but she'd _decided_ she'd rather be _bloody homeless_ than give up — no matter how she tried to downplay it, Harry still thought that was _fucking impressive_, okay. But also kind of scary, in the way that Hermione could get sometimes that made him wonder if she might not be just a _little_ bit mad.

Apparently, the _not giving up_ thing had stuck, because later on she'd decided to use blood magic to have kids with her wife. Who was a veela. Which was a big deal, because humans and veela couldn't have kids with each other, _everyone_ had thought that was impossible, for _millennia_. Now, Harry was less impressed with people doing things that were supposed to be impossible than any random other person might be, given that he spent so much of his time with Lyra and she did impossible things all the time...but he _also_ acknowledged that Lyra was _bloody mad_.

So yeah, his brand new aunt just deciding to create an _entirely new kind of magical being_ just so she could _start a family with her wife_, Harry knew enough to recognise that was brilliant and impressive, and maybe just a little bit _completely fucking mad_, even if he hadn't been that surprised when he'd had it explained to him.

But it was awkward, because he didn't really know how to talk to her. At some level, _aunt_ to him still meant _Petunia_, and he wasn't certain how to deal with an adult who was a stranger but also related to him, and... He was just trying to act casual-but-friendly, and it..._mostly_ seemed to be working? Liz wasn't offended or anything, and didn't think he was being, like, especially weird — she could feel him there, eavesdropping on her surface thoughts and feelings, but didn't seem to care, not even twitching (which did make sense, he guessed, she _did_ spend all her time around veela) — so it was probably fine. He thought. Maybe.

Meeting the rest of her family just made it more awkward.

They'd all gathered in one of the private rooms above the Three Broomsticks, and by the time Liz had led him there it'd been getting sort of late for lunch, well after noon. The second the door had opened, they'd been rushed by a little girl, yelling...something — the only part Harry had understood was _mama_. The girl had abruptly frozen, staring wide-eyed up at Harry, childish excitement and impatience replaced with surprise and a squirming nervousness.

Harry hadn't put together until later that Maëlie had been staring at his _hair_ — she'd only ever seen the Potter Hair on people she was closely related to.

Introductions had quickly gone around, starting with Maëlie, because she'd been right there; she was the youngest at just eight, and she had the Potter Hair too (though she wore it longer, a pitch-black, twisting mane scattered over her shoulders, that just looked _impossible_ to deal with), her eyes a bright silver that sort of reminded Harry of Luna Lovegood. Maëlie didn't speak a word of English, instead Gascon and the Speech (meaning the native veela language) and a bit of French — she was _eight_, and she was working on her _third_ language... — but Harry was getting better at the...mind-magic language interpreting...thing. Besides, Maëlie had gone shy and quiet as soon as Harry had walked in the door, that they didn't share a language hardly mattered.

Next had been Chloé, who was _definitely_ a veela — the smooth silvery hair and gold-orange eyes and the burning heat of her magic, thick with a good-natured curiosity and cheerfulness (and an edge of concern for Liz, Harry wasn't certain what for), yeah, he'd met enough veela by now that that was unmistakable. Harry _thought_ there might have been a bit of resemblance with Gabbie, especially around the eyes, but it was pretty vague, he could be imagining it. (They _were_ related somehow, but he had no idea how closely.) Of course, she was also _distractingly_ pretty but, well, veela. She seemed perfectly nice, if _very_ talkative, she'd pretty much taken over the conversation since Harry had shown up, mostly in the form of asking Harry all kinds of questions and trying to get all the young people talking to each other — which wasn't easy, because awkwardness and language barriers. (Though Chloé did speak English herself, if with a _very_ obvious accent.)

Then there were Isabèu and Eulalie. Isabèu was the younger of the two at thirteen, about six months younger than Harry, and was the most veela-looking of the kids — she had the silvery hair, though a little darker than Chloé's, her eyes the same unnatural orange. She seemed rather excited about this whole being in her mother's home country and having a new cousin thing, all bouncing in her seat and chattering. Another one with the Potter Hair and silver eyes, Eulalie (they mostly called her _Laïa_) was sixteen, and wasn't nearly as excitable, though she seemed nice enough, all smiles at least. (Though she seemed less than impressed with the food, picking at her plate with a polite scowl.) Neither spoke much English at all.

The only one of Liz's kids who _did_ speak English was Doriane. At twenty, she was the oldest — and the first half-human half-veela person in the history of _ever_, apparently (there were more now, besides these four, Liz said she'd been helping other couples for years) — and looked kind of odd, with her black Potter Hair cut _very_ short, the orange veela eyes, both of her ears pierced multiple times, and was that a bit of metal jabbed through her _eyebrow_? Like...okay? She came off a bit colder than the others, all smirking and snarking — though not really in a _mean_ way, some people were just like that, Harry could tell she didn't mean anything by it. By the light-hearted groaning and smiling rolls of eyes from the other girls, the teasing was just expected by now. Despite her English being the best of the bunch (better than Chloé's, even) Doriane didn't really talk much, mostly just provided occasional sarcastic commentary.

For a moment, after being introduced to all of them, Harry wondered if there was a reason Liz and Chloé's children were all girls, if they'd done that on purpose or something. But, _duh_, that was _obvious_ — _of course_ they were all girls, Liz and Chloé didn't have a Y-chromosome between them, bloody idiot...

And they were all nice enough, he guessed, it wasn't like Harry _disliked_ them or anything. It was just awkward. They'd been in here for what had to be a couple hours now, and he still didn't really know what he was doing. The conversation bounced all over the place, Harry couldn't say what all they'd talked about. School stuff had certainly come up, random shite about friends and all, what their home back in Gascony (which was somewhere in Aquitania?) was like — Gabbie and her family also lived there, much of the clan all lived together, though they didn't necessarily all know each other very well, there were literally hundreds of Delacours, apparently — quidditch and languages and even a few bits about magic.

Though that was partially Harry's fault: because of the language barrier, he kept doing the projecting thing he'd picked up from Gabbie, and Liz's family all thought it was very neat. Liz and the kids couldn't project back at him, obviously — or, Doriane _said_ this was obvious, at least, Harry wasn't certain why (because they were only half veela?) — but that was fine, he was getting good enough at that mind magic interpreting thing Blaise did that he could _mostly_ pick up what they were saying, anyway. It was a bit..._fuzzy_, there were occasional misunderstandings and confusion, but it was good enough. In fact, the Delacours had all settled into speaking a mix of Gascon (which was supposedly _not_ the same thing as French, but they sounded very similar to him) and the Speech (which sounded completely alien), for Maëlie's benefit, Harry technically speaking English but using mind magic to cheat, Liz or Doriane only switching to English now and again to clarify something he wasn't quite getting.

He _did_ think it was kind of cool, actually. He meant, he probably _should_ still learn French. It hadn't quite sunk in just how _rare_ English was in the magical world until this last week — most of the kids from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons didn't speak a word of it, the only reason the Delacours he'd met knew some was because Liz was British and Régis had some business in the muggle world. (Though Arte's English was _very_ good, which was odd, there must be an explanation for that.) It was probably mostly just veela who would be okay with this particular workaround, so it wasn't something he should rely on too much, but at least he knew he could get by somewhere nobody spoke English if he really had to.

Anyway, he was a bit uncomfortable, he'd never _stopped_ feeling awkward, but...he thought it was going fine? It seemed like it anyway. Even if he didn't know what he was doing...or if he _should_ even be doing anything, really. He meant, Liz had never said what she expected from this, visiting Britain and meeting him, so...

Well, she'd implied she intended to teach him Potter things, like the family traditions and history and stuff Lyra and Sirius referenced for the Blacks all the time, which... The importance of this stuff didn't click to Harry the way it did for people who were raised in it, but he wasn't _against_ it, that was fine. It might even be interesting...maybe? He meant...

Part of him was kind of leery about it. He meant, the more he learned about politics and stuff, the more he got the odd feeling that...the Dark was kind of...right, about stuff? Not the _Allied Dark_ Dark, like the former Death Eaters, more like the Common Fate and...whatever the other one was called, it was Latin, _that_ part of the Dark. He wasn't certain about, like, the stuff about regulating magic, there was _definitely_ magic that people shouldn't be allowed to do...but some of the magic that had been made illegal was...kind of stupid? It wasn't the _idea_ of banning certain kinds of magics he thought was dumb, necessarily, they'd just banned too many things, he thought. And, well, Hermione was right, throwing people into a prison (with _dementors_) for _reading a book_ was so fucking stupid he didn't even have words. Like, okay, if someone used the magic they found in a "bad" book to hurt someone, fine, punish them for _that_, but just for _reading_ it? What if they were reading it so they'd know how to _fight against_ that kind of magic, in case they had to? _So_ stupid...

Also, he hadn't realised the Light were apparently bloody racists. Which..._did_ make sense, when he thought about it? Ron's family was Light, and he'd flipped (if temporarily) about Hagrid being half-giant. It was mostly the people from Light (and Death Eater) families who'd had problems with Lupin being a werewolf, and with Stacey this year — Harry knew nothing about vampires himself, sure, but Stacey herself seemed nice enough? _Everyone_ was uncomfortable hearing about Sylvia, though the Light kids were the weirdest about it. And these last few days, it was mostly the Light kids being stupid over the veela among the Beauxbatons students — there'd been some grumbling about Fleur Harry had overheard that was, just, _awful_, people were _terrible_ sometimes.

Harry somehow hadn't noticed until September this year that at least part of Lavender and her friends' problem with Hermione was that she was muggleborn. He had no idea how he'd missed that.

Of course, not _all_ the Light were terrible about this stuff. There were Light families in Common Fate, and they tended to be better about it — the Longbottoms were one, and Neville was..._less_ bad (he was still weird about Sylvia, but fine otherwise). The Lovegoods were, like, _super_ Light, and they were fine. It did depend, some.

The Dark, in general, were _much_ better about this particular thing. Which did make sense, really, racist people did call nonhumans _dark creatures_ — why would the _Dark_ use the label they _used for themselves_ to refer to other people like an insult? He had _no idea_ why he'd thought it was the Dark who were all the racist people, that was _obvious_...

But, well...the impression he'd gotten talking to James, and the things Liz had said about his grandfather, Harry had the feeling the Potters might have been...the _bad_ kind of Light. Maybe? They wouldn't have _always_ been like that. He'd learned over the summer, from the books about the Potters Lyra had made him read, that the first Lord Potter had been a Longbottom, which had been a Dark family at the time, and his wife had been a Peverell, who were apparently famous for a lot of them being full-on _necromancers_. So, if the _traditions_ Liz was talking about would all be, like, _recent_ stuff, from the last few generations, maybe that wouldn't be so good. If Harry was just going to learn his family had been a whole bunch of awful, stupid, racist people, he wasn't certain he wanted to know.

Though, if the family hadn't _always_ been racist and terrible (which seemed very likely), Liz would probably pick things from their history to teach him more selectively. She _had_ married a veela, after all, he doubted she wanted to talk about that stuff any more than he wanted to hear about it. So, he was kind of ambivalent about the whole thing, he guessed. It might be interesting, sure, but...

But beyond just teaching him stuff? Liz had mentioned, talking about her father kicking her out of the family — just for marrying someone he didn't approve of, _because she was a dark creature, the horror!_ (arsehole) — that if she were to be brought back into the family, Harry would have to full-on adopt her...but she hadn't said it like it was a suggestion. He meant, Harry hadn't gotten the impression Liz was, like, looking to become a Potter again, all proper like. He had no idea what she was looking to get out of this. So he didn't know how to deal with her, exactly.

So, talking to her family was kind of awkward. Not _bad_, just awkward.

While Isabèu ("Izzie") was on an energetic ramble about her and some of her friends back at Beauxbatons getting caught playing around with a football in someone's garden — apparently there was a big magical town right outside of the school gates, the students often went out on off days and get themselves mixed up in all kinds of things — Harry noticed Liz, Chloé, and Doriane had huddled together at the other side of the table, muttering to each other about something serious. It felt serious, anyway, though Harry couldn't tell what it was they were talking about from here.

His attention wandered enough he lost track of what Izzie was saying. "Oh, shite, I'm sorry, I wasn't— Is something wrong?"

It didn't seem like Liz and Doriane noticed he was talking to them, but Chloé shot him a smile. "It's nothing, lovely, it's only starting to get a little late. We should start thinking about getting ready to go home." In English, so it was obviously intended for him.

"At least before _la pichòta princesa_ falls asleep at the table." Doriane ruffled Maëlie's hair a little, the girl half-asleep tucked in against her side. (Apparently, "Maëlie" literally meant _princess_ in some language or other, they called her _the little princess_ sometimes.)

"_No_," Maëlie groaned, the sound long and whining — and also slightly muffled, her face pressed against Doriane. She said something else, but Harry didn't quite catch it. Protesting that she was so very awake, presumably.

Laïa said something then, in Gascon, but Harry hadn't been focusing on her, he didn't catch that either. Liz response was also in Gascon, he focused on her in time to interpret it. "I will have to come in to talk to Maxime about it, you know. Chloé and Maëlie must go home for now, though — I haven't even asked Harry about the townhouse yet."

Izzie was bouncing in her seat and twittering with excitement, so Harry had to raise his voice a little to ask, "What townhouse?"

"Ah..." Liz hesitated for a second, exchanging a glance with Chloé. "You remember I explained that the Potters have a property in the Refuge, where my uncle Lyndon lived."

Yes, he did, though he still wasn't certain what the Refuge was — he was assuming it was a magical settlement somewhere, since it'd sounded like she was talking about a village or something. Not Hogsmeade, obviously, but maybe something in Ireland? There was supposedly a magical town somewhere over there, he didn't know what it was called... "Sure, what about it?"

"Since Fleur is the Beauxbatons Champion in the Tournament, Isabèu and Laïa wanted to join the rest of the students here, but Maëlie is too young, and the three of us are too old, we would need somewhere else to stay. Also, since Gabrielle ran off and is refusing to go home, Régis would like there to be a few more reliable adults in the country. I thought Doriane and I could fix up the old townhouse to be liveable again — so far as I know, hardly anyone has set foot in the place since Lyndon died, it's probably not in great shape — and Chloé and Maëlie would join us once it's ready. With your permission, of course."

"Oh, that makes sense." With the way the Beauxbatons carriage was absurdly expanded they could probably take a couple more kids, and they'd brought professors with, so it wasn't like they'd fall behind in their classes. (Izzie and Laïa didn't speak nearly enough English to sit in on classes up in Hogwarts.) And the townhouse probably was a mess, Harry had heard what Grimmauld Place had been like — the Potters hadn't been nearly as _completely mad_ as the Blacks, but this townhouse of hers had also been abandoned for longer, so who knew what the place was like now. Probably not suitable for anyone to stay in, at least. "Yeah, that's fine, if you want to." It wasn't like Harry had even known the place _existed_ before Liz had told him about it, what did he care...

...Wait a second. Couldn't they just... "You know, I'm sure Sirius would be willing to put you up at Ancient House. There are _more_ than enough empty bedrooms..."

Liz and Chloé both twitched in surprise, Doriane raising her pierced eyebrow. "Well," Liz said after a moment, sounding a little taken aback, "we wouldn't want to impose..."

"I'm sure he wouldn't mind." In fact, Harry thought this was a _great_ idea. He'd gotten the impression that Sirius didn't really...do well _alone_. Hermione was convinced that the Blacks had a predisposition to something she called _bipolar disorder_, and after explaining it to him, yeah, that did make a lot of sense, those up and down moods Sirius would get. (Far as he could tell, Lyra had it too, she just only got the up moods.) It hadn't been _that_ long since he'd been in Azkaban, and dementors were _terrible_, and he'd been miserable when they'd all been _leaving_ at the end of the summer...

Harry suspected Sirius had been drinking. A lot. He tried not to let Harry see anything was wrong, but the couple times he'd seen him since the beginning of term... Well, Sirius didn't try very hard to keep Harry out of his head, he picked things up. And Gin was going to Ancient House for dueling lessons with him now, a couple times a week, and she said sometimes he seemed rather...disheveled. He was never actually _drunk_, but there were potions for that.

Harry suspected actually having _other people_ in the house would be very good for Sirius. Even if he protested, Harry would probably tell him the Delacours were staying with him, whether he liked it or not.

(Because, they were supposed to look out for each other. That's what family was _for_.)

"I can ask him right now, if you like," he said, reaching into his (expanded) pocket to pull out a hand-mirror. Part of the lecture he'd gotten after being selected as a fourth bloody Champion and the Revel had involved carrying the mirror Sirius had given him over the summer at all times — Sirius had been rather exasperated with him when Harry had explained he'd had to have Blaise floo call him because he hadn't had the mirror on him. Which, yes, okay, it was reasonable to make sure he always had a way to contact Sirius, just in case he really had to, but it hadn't occurred to him he _would_ have to _at Hogwarts_, _supposedly_ the safest place in the country. Sue him.

"Ah...I don't know..."

Brightly smiling, Chloé said, "What she does not wish to say, is she does not know this Lord Black, and she does not know if he will be comfortable housing a blood-traitor, her subhuman wife, and their half-breed children."

"I realised that, yes," Harry said, smirking a little. Liz didn't bother with occlumency at all, that much had been pretty bloody obvious.

But Liz wasn't listening to him, she'd turned to hiss at her wife in English. "Chloé, you shouldn't speak like that in front of the children."

Chloé mostly managed to hold in her amused smile, but she was still doing the veela _throw your feelings out at everyone_ thing, intensely enough Maëlie and Izzie giggled. "Darling, they hear that sort of thing from other children all the time. What I say sarcastically, they have been told worse with intent to hurt them. You know this."

"Yes, I just..." Liz forced out a long sigh, her eyes tipping to the ceiling for a second. "Fuck it, never mind. I don't mean anything by it, Harry, I'm just saying, I've never met Black at all. Well, a couple times, actually, but he must have been two or three, and that doesn't really count."

Well, no, Sirius was under the impression he'd never met Liz at all, so. "I'm sure he won't mind. He's a bit of a blood-traitor himself, you know, and I know for a fact he likes veela just fine." Sirius had gone to parties that had transitioned into _orgies_ thrown by veela, but that didn't seem quite appropriate to, just, come out and say...even though he doubted any of the Delacours would care — that sort of crazy shite was apparently just a normal weekend for veela. "He'd probably love having you around, honestly. Big empty house all by himself, you know."

He wondered if he should warn them Sirius would almost certainly end up flirting with Chloé at some point (and Liz and Doriane too, probably). It was probably fine, Chloé was a bloody veela, she must be used to that sort of thing by now...

Liz and Chloé looked at each other for a long moment — Harry got the impression they were having a silent conversation of some kind, either through mind magic or just with expressions, though he wasn't picking up any of it himself. Doriane said something to them, though he didn't catch _that_ either, it was in the veela language and he hadn't been paying attention to her. With a last doubtful frown from Liz and a crooked smile from Chloé, Liz turned back to Harry. "All right, if your godfather is comfortable with it, that should work. We will still have to go back home to pick up some things sometime this evening, and I'll have to talk to Maxime about Laïa and Isabèu, but we don't need to tend to either right this second. If you wanted to call him now."

"Right, I'll do that." He hesitated for a second, then slipped out of his chair. "I'm gonna go downstairs and meet him at the grate. Back in a couple minutes?"

A moment later, Harry was in the hall outside their private room, the stairs down to the main area of the pub to his right. He didn't start moving right away, leaned against the wall and swiped at the surface of the mirror to activate it — he didn't know how these things worked, exactly, but they were pretty cool. (Sirius claimed he and James had used these to talk to each other when in separate detentions, but Harry had the feeling he was making that up, no idea why he did things like that.) After a brief delay, there was a tingle of magic against his fingers as the enchantments took, and Sirius's face appeared on the surface.

Harry noticed immediately that Sirius was rather more well-groomed than usual, without the stubble he normally didn't bother with, the dark wall behind him vaguely familiar. The Black office under the Wizengamot Hall, that was it. "Oh, I'm sorry, are you busy?"

"No, no, pup, don't worry about it. I had a meeting a bit ago, but I'm free now — Emma and Meda are handling the rest, and good riddance, I'd probably just bugger it up." Well, at least Sirius was _aware_ of his limitations, that had to count for something. "Is something wrong? Weren't you meeting with Elizabeth today?"

"Nothing's wrong, Liz and her family are in the other room right now. It's about them, actually."

His head tilting, Sirius said, "What about them?"

"Well, you know, Izzie and Laïa — Liz's kids, the middle two — they want to join the Beauxbatons people here, because their cousin is one of the Champions, but the rest can't stay with them, so they need a place to stay while they're in Britain. I was thinking..."

The look of faint concern vanished, replaced with a bright smile. "Oh, sure, no problem! The elves cleaned up far more of Ancient House than we really need, there's plenty of room. Who all we talking about here?"

"Um, Liz and Chloé, and Maëlie — she's only, like, eight, too young for school. Doriane too, but she's an adult, I think she'll probably spend a lot of time back home?" She had to have a job or something, right? Harry sort of doubted she could just spend the whole year hanging around in Britain. He wouldn't think Liz should be able to either, but she was some big-name blood alchemist, apparently, she'd probably be fine taking a break for a while. And she could probably pop back home for a day if she had an appointment to do a...blood alchemy thing. (Harry didn't know what that entailed, exactly.)

"So, one of the family suites, then. Doriane can slip off to one of the single bedrooms if she doesn't want to be stuck so close to her parents, but, sure, no problem. Yeah, just bring them on over, I should be home in a couple minutes."

"Ah, I thought you could come here and talk to them first..."

Sirius looked slightly confused as to why he should bother meeting people before inviting them to stay in his home for months on end, but he nodded anyway. "I'm gonna pop back home and change out of these robes quick, but I can be there in five minutes or so." The background swirled, moved, Sirius presumably standing up and moving toward the floo. "You're at the Three Broomsticks, right?"

"Yeah, in a private room, I'll meet you at the floo and bring you up."

"Right. See you in a few."

"Thanks, Sirius." He _did_ realise it was sort of a big deal, just, asking him out of the blue to host complete strangers in his house...

But Sirius just chuckled, shaking his head. "Sure, kid." And the mirror went dark.

The floo in the Three Broomsticks, like most of these sort of places in magical Britain, was right in the middle of the main room, out in the open. This being the Three Broomsticks, probably the single most popular pub in Britain, there were plenty of people about. Not as many as there _might_ have been — it was too late for lunch and too early for dinner, and while it was an official Hogsmeade weekend most students had moved on — but a good half of the tables were occupied, a few people sitting at the bar. Mostly adults, it seemed, very few looked to be student age.

Which was a good thing, as far as Harry was concerned. Over these last days, since his name had come out of the Goblet, a lot of the other students had gotten _very_ stupid. Because, apparently he _must_ have gotten himself into the Tournament because he's a self-righteous, glory-seeking– blah blah, the usual nonsense people who'd never actually met him before assumed must be true. It kind of reminded him of second year, when half the school had been convinced he was the Heir of Slytherin or whatever, all glaring and hissing at him all the time.

Though, maybe it was just because it was still early, but it wasn't _nearly_ as bad as that time. For one thing, in second year most of Gryffindor hadn't backed him like they were now. He couldn't convince a lot of them that he really _hadn't_ put his name in the Goblet, but, well, they had _two_ Gryffindors in the Tournament, most of them thought that was great, no matter how it'd come about. (Angie had been a little irritable at first, she'd really been hoping she'd get it — _Harry_ had been hoping she'd get it — but she'd gotten over it quickly.) Because Ron wasn't around anymore, he'd been spending a little bit more time with Neville and Seamus and Dean, which was probably why they kind of seemed to...take it personally, when they overheard little Ravenclaws or Slytherins mumbling about it. Because, they were actually sort of friends now, see, at least a little bit, they really hadn't been before.

And there were even people in other houses defending him too, especially in Hufflepuff and Slytherin. In Hufflepuff, there was Justin, who was actually a pretty good mate these days, he'd said he'd gotten into an argument in their common room that first night over the whole thing — and had actually gotten backup from Susan Bones and Cedric Diggory (their quidditch captain, alongside Angie another favourite for Champion), alongside a few other people Harry didn't know as well. He should try talking to Susan sometime, she seemed nice, and was friends with Hermione and everything, so she probably wasn't an idiot about that sort of thing, like far too many mages. Anyway, according to Justin, that first night Hufflepuff had...had a house meeting, discussing what they should do about having two Hogwarts Champions, both of whom technically shouldn't have been in it in the first place...and then they'd had a _vote_ on it.

Because Hufflepuff had house meetings and class representatives and votes and shite, that was a thing, apparently. It was bloody weird. Their internal government Harry _somehow_ hadn't realised was a thing all these years had decided Hufflepuff would support Lyra in the Tournament, but also that any kind of Hogwarts victory was acceptable, so they _wouldn't oppose_ Harry either, even if they weren't officially supporting him. But they weren't supposed to shun him for being a rule-breaking bad person, they could actually get in trouble with the other Hufflepuffs if they did.

Hufflepuffs still gave him some nasty looks sometimes, but at least they were subtle about it.

The Slytherins were mixed, as they always were these days. In their year, Daphne and Tracey and Theo were obviously not being arses about it, and Malfoy and his Death Eater wannabe friends weren't _happy_, but were too terrified of Lyra to say anything. (Harry suspected they'd been involved in Lyra being hospitalised at the end of last year, and knew she hadn't been obliviated, and were waiting for the shoe to drop. Either that, or it was related to Lady Malfoy inexplicably deciding to stab Riddle in the back, he wasn't sure.) The older kids, well, the ones from families that were allied with the Blacks, the non-racist side of the Dark, tended to be friendly with him these days, or at least _polite_, and that hadn't changed so far. (It _was_ still early, who knew what would happen a couple weeks from now.) The rest of the upper years mostly seemed to be angry at _Lyra_, and not him, which...it was probably kind of shite for him to say, but he was fine with that.

The younger kids, well, they didn't seem to care, they were just excited the Tournament was happening at all — most of the lower years, that's how it was turning out. Which did make sense when he thought about it. When he'd been their age, he hadn't even been aware of the drama going on between the older kids half the time...still wasn't, really...

Oddly enough, it was actually the Ravenclaws who were being the biggest prats about it. If one of these _everybody decides that the Boy Who Lived is actually terrible now_ situations were to happen again, as they seemed to every now and again (people were _so_ stupid), Harry wouldn't have guessed the Ravenclaws would be the worst — in the past, it was always the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs who gave him the most trouble. It was kind of weird...but also kind of made sense, in a way? He meant, the only Ravenclaw Harry really knew very well at all was Luna, and she wasn't very well-liked by the rest of her house either, so...

So, while Harry waited for Sirius to show up, leaning against the bricks next to the floo, he didn't really draw much attention — or at least, no more than he always did going out in public. There were hardly any Hogwarts students in here at all. That was Morgana Yaxley at a table with a couple of her friends, mostly Slytherins. Yaxley had never really bothered Harry much...but then, she _was_ older, in the same year as the Twins and Angie and Alicia, even the Slytherin upperclassmen from Death Eater families (which the Yaxleys were, he thought) had never really made a point of giving him shite. Thought meddling in the feuds of little kids was beneath them, he assumed, even if Harry was the Boy Who Lived or whatever. Though, Yaxley herself was apparently...sort-of friends with the Twins, so she might be fine, actually... Whatever, point was, Yaxley and her friends were pretty much the only Hogwarts students in the place. When Harry walked in, a couple of them had glanced his way briefly before just going back to their conversation, one of them, Harry vaguely recognised him as one of their chasers, tipping his butterbeer bottle at him cheerily before ignoring him.

Sometimes it was still weird, realising that most of the Slytherins were actually perfectly fine with him. He'd been so accustomed to the idea that they all hated him for no reason...

From the adults in the room, there were plenty of glances in his direction, turning back to their companions to have whispered, shifty conversations. And while some of those glances were...sort of unpleasant — Harry honestly had no idea what kind of rumours would be going around outside of the school by now, but probably nothing good (it was _never_ anything good) — nobody spoke to him directly, or came over to bother him. Which, that was fine, the pointed looks and the staring weren't..._too_ bad. He was kind of used to it, honestly. Mages tended to be stupid about the Boy Who Lived stuff, this really wasn't that different from normal.

He was still rather relieved when Sirius came bouncing out of the floo a few minutes later — perfectly smoothly and casually, without even the hint of a stumble, because _of course_ he did, _everybody_ was better with the floo than Harry was. In these last couple minutes, Sirius had changed into jeans and a tee shirt with some text and a bloke _on fire_, must have gotten it at a concert over the summer in California. ("Rage Against the Machine" sounded like it'd be one of those terrible noisy bands Sirius and Lyra really liked for some reason Harry didn't get _at all_.) Sirius seemed to get more heated looks from the pub's patrons than Harry...

...which wasn't any kind of surprise, when he thought about it. After all, Sirius had been public enemy number one during that whole _totally a mass-murdering Death Eater on the loose_ thing, and shortly after being exonerated had quickly made himself public enemy number one for putting a muggle in the Wizengamot. There were a _lot_ of people who _really_ didn't like Harry's godfather.

Which Sirius was perfectly aware of, of course, Harry was pretty sure it only encouraged him.

"Hey, kid," he said, clapping Harry on the shoulder. As it often was, his head was a sparking, noisy mess, but it wasn't so scattered that Harry couldn't follow his thoughts if he wanted to — this wasn't one of his _up_ moods, just Sirius's normal flamboyant cheerfulness. "Let's not keep the Delacour ladies waiting, yeah?"

Rolling his eyes, Harry turned to lead the way toward the stairs. He could practically feel Sirius swaggering after him — Lyra and Sirius were _unnervingly_ similar, somehow managing to _walk_ over-dramatically was one of those things they had in common — but he also picked up a tingling nervousness starting to crawl over Sirius's head. Well, not _nervousness_, exactly, but definitely something...anxiety-adjacent.

Oh, wait, it was just occurring to Harry now that James might have talked to Sirius about Liz, and it probably hadn't been flattering. There had been that argument leading up to their parents' funeral, Sirius and James would have been close then, and... Huh. This might be awkward, actually, hadn't thought of that...

So Harry wasn't entirely surprised when, at the top of the stairs, Sirius stopped him with a soft, "Hey." Sirius had his hands in his pockets, giving Harry a narrow-eyed suspicious sort of look. "You okay? About Liz and everything. Is there anything we need to talk about, or..."

"No? I mean, yeah, I'm fine. If I had a big problem with Liz, I wouldn't have suggested inviting them over to stay at Ancient House."

"I don't know," Sirius drawled, a smirk twitching at his lips, "you can be a damn push-over sometimes. You and James have that in common."

Harry rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. Are _you_ okay, with Liz coming over and everything?"

"I wouldn't have agreed to it if I weren't comfortable with it," he said with a dismissive flick of his fingers. Which was bullshit — he was lying, but it was a _small_ lie, so it was...probably fine? "It might be a little awkward at first, it's not like I ever even met Jamie's sister, but if she ran off to the Continent to marry a veela she can't be _that_ bad, I'm not worried." _That_ part wasn't a lie. "So, which room they in?"

"Er, over here..."

"Go on, open the door for me."

Walking across the hall, he shot a frown at Sirius over his shoulder. "What?"

With that suave, lopsided grin of his, he said, "You know me, gotta make an entrance."

Harry kind of wanted to turn him back around and shove him through the floo to Ancient House, bring the Delacours along after him, but it was too late for that now. Bracing himself for whatever his _insane_ godfather might have in mind, Harry pulled open the door.

In a blink, a waist-high, shaggy black dog was charging past him, yipping cheerfully. There were some squeals of excitement from inside...followed by Liz telling Izzie she _really_ shouldn't be giving an animagus ear-scratches before even being introduced, hardly even audible over Izzie, Laïa, and Maëlie all giggling.

Harry sighed.

* * *

[_la pichòta princesa_] — _For anyone wondering what the hell language this is, Occitan._

[Apparently, "Maëlie" literally meant _princess_ in some language or other] — _It's technically a Francophone feminisation of a Breton (Celtic) word for a chieftain._

[a tee shirt with some text and a bloke _on fire_] — _Fun facts: the cover of Rage Against the Machine's debut album features a famous photograph of the self-immolation of Buddhist monk Thíck __Quảng Đức, protesting the authoritarian anti-Buddhist policies of Ngô Đình Diệm, the fiercely anti-communist president of South Vietnam. Because I guess you should know exactly what's up with an album before buying it._

_On a semi-related tangent, what the hell is with anti-communist Catholics? (Christians in general, really, but especially Catholics.) I was raised Catholic myself, and I always thought those people were strange. Like, if you think Jesus would be at all cool with capitalism, we did __**not**_ _read the same Bible, that's all I'm saying._

_Yeah, delay, whoops. We were both distracted by other projects for a bit. Probably shouldn't hang as long again in the near future, but we'll see. —Lysandra_


	35. Of Gods and Magic

"Are you and Lyra having a fight or something?"

At the unexpected question, Hermione started to a halt in the middle of the Great Hall, her eyes tipping up to the ceiling with a sigh. "That's really not your business, Rachel."

She wasn't looking at the younger girl, but she could still feel Rachel's petulant little glare boring into her back. "It sort of is, if you two are going to be all weird around me." That sounded far too much like something Lyra might say, she'd clearly been a _terrible_ influence on Rachel.

"I don't want to talk about it." Partially because it really _wasn't_ the nosey girl's business, but mostly because she didn't really know what she'd say even if she wanted to. It was complicated.

On the one hand, she felt she was perfectly justified in haing a problem with her girlfriend, just, running off to have sex with some other girl, regularly, for _months_, and never saying anything about it. And the way she'd finally told her about it too, just casually dropping it on her head out of nowhere! She'd known Lyra was careless with the things she said sometimes, but _honestly_. But anyway, she had a right to know if her girlfriend was sleeping with someone else, and she didn't think her hurt and anger over the whole thing was at all out of place.

But, on the other hand, Lyra _did_ sort of have a point: Hermione _had_ told her she didn't want to know what she got up to in the forest. Granted, when she'd said that she'd been referring to the messy, bloody, _very dangerous_ hunting of giant man-eating spiders — not only were the details just disgusting, but knowing what Lyra was getting up to out there just made her anxious, better to not think about it. She hadn't considered the possibility that Lyra might be doing anything _else_ with Sylvia at all.

Which was sort of stupid, in retrospect, because she distinctly recalled thinking to herself back in spring, as part of her musings on Lyra's relationship with Harry, that if Lyra were snogging _anyone_ she'd expect it to be Sylvia. She recalled wondering just what was going on between them when they were out in the forest with nobody else around — given how Sylvia had been, just, _hanging all over_ Lyra the one time they'd met, _completely naked_, it was impossible to _not_ wonder about it — but, for some reason, Sylvia had just sort of...slipped out of Hermione's awareness entirely. Which was stupid, because she really shouldn't have.

But, while it was obvious _to Hermione_ that having sex with Sylvia was a separate topic from hunting spiders, one which should be addressed separately, she _could_ at least acknowledge — now, with a little distance from their initial argument — that it probably wouldn't have occurred to Lyra that Hermione might think so. Hermione had said she didn't want to know what Lyra got up to in the forest with Sylvia, so Lyra hadn't told her.

From anyone else, Hermione might have taken that as just an excuse, clumsily evading blame, but in Lyra's case she didn't _really_ think it was. As far as Lyra was concerned, she'd simply done what Hermione had asked her to — she could be very literal like that, sometimes. If nothing else, Lyra's very obvious surprise, confusion, and frustration in their initial argument proved she legitimately hadn't realised she'd been doing anything objectionable.

So, Lyra hadn't been _trying_ to hurt her. In a way, though, that almost made it worse.

(_Almost_.)

On the _other_ other hand, well, there was context that sort of made this more complicated than it might have been otherwise. Hermione wasn't even certain it was fair to hold Lyra entirely responsible for this...misunderstanding. She meant, it had become very clear in that conversation that she and Lyra had different ideas about how this sort of relationship was supposed to work. Part of this was cultural — Hermione had been aware that the institution of marriage worked differently in magical Britain from what she was used to, especially among the nobility, but she'd still been _entirely blindsided_ by the revelation that _every single_ married adult Lyra had _ever_ known had had extra-marital affairs. And, when she thought about it, she should have realised...sexual fidelity, let's call it, wasn't _nearly_ as big of a deal here as she was used to. Hell, just look at the Zabinis...

It looked like Harry was even getting used to the idea, if his blatantly obvious preoccupation with Gabbie was any indication, but it was still sort of weird to Hermione.

And, Lyra was _Lyra_, after all. She hadn't asked, but she was willing to bet jealousy was one of those emotions Eris had burned out of her — it was sort of hard to predict the expression of an emotion in another person if you were incapable of feeling it yourself. And, well, Lyra _might_ have been able to predict jealousy...if she'd realised there'd been anything to be jealous _of_. They'd had a somewhat calmer conversation about it yesterday, and, since they weren't having sex, Lyra had assumed that sex wasn't included in the category of "dating", so obviously it wouldn't be infringing on her relationship with Hermione to have sex with other people. That..._almost_ made sense, when she thought about it.

This misunderstanding came down to Hermione and Lyra having different ideas about what their relationship meant, exactly, and neither of them qualifying these things with each other ahead of time, because their own understanding had been obvious to each of them, so it hadn't seemed necessary. Which, Hermione probably _should_ have anticipated that — Lyra never understood _perfectly ordinary_ social things without having them explained to her first, there was no reason to expect this would be any different.

Not to say it was _Hermione_'s fault either, it was just...complicated.

And, well, it was maybe important to note that Lyra had only brought up the fact that she was sleeping with Sylvia in the first place to explicitly contrast her relationship with Sylvia as _less meaningful_ than her relationship with Hermione. Which was odd on _so_ many levels...

_Complicated_ was a good word for it. The whole thing was complicated.

"What are you even doing up here?"

Hermione jumped, whirled around to find Rachel behind her, moodily glaring up at her with her hands in her pockets. "Are you still following me?"

"I've been _trying_ to ask if you and Lyra are breaking up or something, but you've been ignoring me."

...Oh. Oops. "Sorry, I'm just... Ah, no, we're not breaking up." Lyra had asked her the same thing, yesterday, because she hadn't been certain either. Hermione had just asked for space for a few days, maybe a week, to process all this.

After all, this was _hardly_ the worst thing Lyra had ever done. Hermione was certain she'd get over it, just as she had everything else. They _definitely_ needed to have a serious talk about this sort of thing one of these days, but it wasn't the end of the world.

"Why do you care so much anyway?"

Rachel let out a little huff, practically rolling her eyes. "I _don't_, really, but if you and Lyra split up it's going to make things with all your friends really weird and awkward — and there's the politics of it too, with your mum and all, no idea how _that_ would work out. I'd just like some warning is all."

"Oh." Okay, she guessed that _did_ sort of make sense. Rachel did talk to a few people in her year, but Hermione had noticed she spent most of her time outside of class with various fourth-years. She'd even joined Harry's little unofficial dueling club and everything. (Apparently she'd already started beating Justin sometimes, Gin thought the whole thing was hilarious.) Any drama around Hermione and Lyra probably would affect her, in one way or another.

Though, the concerns about the politics of it probably weren't justified. If Hermione and Lyra broke up, the Grangers would still be vassals of the Blacks, one relationship had no bearing on the other, so Mum would probably stay on as the Blacks' proxy in the Wizengamot. She could see how Mum representing a Noble and Most Ancient House might be a big deal for a muggleborn Slytherin, and how the Grangers and the Blacks falling out might give the racists in Slytherin the idea that Lyra might be less willing to back Rachel, but it wasn't actually a problem.

Hermione considered reassuring her about that, but she would bet Rachel didn't want to hear platitudes from her. Right, back to her original question, then. She was _up here_, in the corridor all the apprentices' offices were in, because, "I just wanted to talk to Éanna about something."

Rachel frowned at her. "I thought Snape taught your years' classes."

"He does." He did labs in rotation with Mr Lloyd, but mostly. "It isn't about class. Actually, you might want to sit in, I was going to ask him about the mages' religion."

It'd occurred to her, at some point between her Introduction and the Samhain Revel, that Lyra was a _very_ biased source when it came to high magic stuff. She might have an inside line, giving her more direct knowledge of these things than most any ordinary person could boast, but she still saw things from the perspective of Eris (Chaos) first, and the Dark second. That was, obviously, a lopsided point of view. Not to mention, while she acknowledged herself that it was imperfect, she still spoke of these things with the language of the Powers paradigm, which Hermione understood was an exclusively European framework. And not even a universal one either, apparently the whole Powers thing was most common where older traditions had been more effectively suppressed — in places like Britain, where high magic had effectively been made Anathema, formal ritualists using the Powers framework were all that had survived.

With a few particular exceptions. It wasn't common knowledge, apparently, but according to Lyra the Gaels had managed to preserve certain old practices, outside the view of the (mostly British) Aurors. It wasn't a secret that many Gaelic mages were still religious, but it _was_ a secret that the priesthoods of their various cults were mostly white and black mages. (Which wasn't unusual, before high magic had been illegalised everyone had understood that was what "priest" was _supposed_ to mean.) In fact, Lyra was reasonably confident Fionn Ingham, one of the Gaelic nationalists protecting the delegation from muggle Ireland, was a white mage dedicated to Brigid — Hermione assumed the goddess must be related to one of the patron saints of Ireland who _just so happened_ to have the same name, that couldn't be a coincidence. Though, Lyra couldn't say exactly what kind of goddess Brigid was, really.

Because the Gaels didn't use the whole Powers thing Lyra had grown up with, so their gods didn't map onto it very well. So, Irish mages, the ones who'd been raised in their native religion, would have an _entirely different_ perspective of high magic.

Éanna wasn't a white mage himself, but he _was_ religious — he happened to worship Brigid, actually. So, it might be interesting to ask him about it, Hermione had thought.

(That wasn't rude, was it, to go interrogating someone about their religion? She didn't _think_ so, as long as she was nice about it...)

Rachel gave her a sort of doubtful look. "Er, no offence, but I've always thought normal religion was kind of boring. Is magic religion really all that different?"

"The religion part probably isn't that different. But, last I checked, Christian Mass didn't include invoking God in ritual to do magic that would be impossible otherwise." At least, it didn't _anymore_, anyway — according to one of the books she'd gotten from the Bookstore, ritual magic had once been a part of practically every religion, including Christianity. Hermione herself suspected most of the "miracles" attributed to early saints had actually been the products of ritual magic. The practice had been gradually phased out over the centuries, though. (The book Hermione had read suggested the prohibition against the use of ritual magic had been part of the effort to centralise Church power, which had fascinating implications, when she thought about it.)

Her eyes going wide, Rachel muttered, "Oh. Right. Okay, I guess I can tag along, if you don't mind."

Éanna was, unsurprisingly, at his desk in his office. It was a weekend, so he hadn't any classes, and Hermione hardly ever saw him anywhere else. Honestly, Hermione suspected Gin was reminding him to eat, he missed meals with some regularity. (He hadn't been at lunch just now, in fact.) The half of his office Lyra had taken over was unoccupied, which also wasn't a surprise — she'd left the castle to meet Mum, something about adapting the tracking spell she'd cast on Gabbie as an extra security measure.

Hermione wasn't certain how she felt about Lyra casting _blood runes_ on her mother but, well, Mum _was_ making a nuisance of herself to people who considered her less than human, and also happened to have _magic powers_, so. At least Lyra had tested it on Gabbie first.

(She would rather her mother not get murdered by magic racists, thanks.)

Glancing up from what appeared to be a student essay, Éanna frowned at them. Well, not _at_ them, really, more _in their general direction_ — Éanna never seemed to make direct eye contact, his gaze usually focused on the wall to the side or above the person he was speaking to...or just not anywhere near them at all. It was sort of odd, but Éanna couldn't really help being autistic, could he. "Maïa, Miss Rachel. What is it?"

Rachel rolled her eyes. "We're not in class, you can drop the _Miss_."

"I'd rather not," Éanna muttered, his eyes flicking far to his left and staying there. "If I don't do it all the time, I'll forget to do it ever, and Brits can be weird about formality, so I shouldn't do that."

"Well, then it should be Miss _Campbell_, shouldn't it?"

Éanna blinked. "...I hate English." For all that he showed it, Éanna might not have even noticed Rachel giggling at him, but he _did_ wait for her to finish before speaking again, so he must have. "Is there a reason you two are here? I mean, I don't think there was, there was a thing— I'm not missing anything important, am I?"

"No, you're not missing anything," Hermione said, duplicating the single chair across his desk before sitting in it. "Well, unless you think lunch is important."

"Right. Food." Éanna paused a moment, staring blankly at his desk. "That should be fine. I mean, I was at breakfast..." It sounded like a question, so Hermione nodded. "...and I should be hungry by dinner, so it will be easy to remember to, to do that one. So. Wait, you're _not_ here to remind me to eat?"

Rachel giggled again. "You need to get an alarm clock, Mister Éanna."

"Yeah, my father had that thought too. It only lasted for a day, and the first time it went off, it was..." Éanna shivered. "That was an interesting one. Anyway, back to why you're here..."

It took Hermione a second to realise Éanna must have destroyed his alarm clock the first time he heard it go off. Made sense, she guessed — autistic people did sometimes react badly to loud or grating noises...and then add in accidental magic... "Right, well, this might be somewhat weird, and if I say something offensive just go ahead and tell me off. I'm not going to do it on purpose, but, you know."

Éanna seemed faintly amused. "Maïa, when have I ever been offended about anything?"

Well, yes, that was one of the reasons she'd thought it better to ask Éanna about this stuff than any other Irish pureblood in the castle. "Okay, then. You see, there's been a rumour going around that..." Hermione trailed off as she realised she didn't know how people talked about these things. "Ah, I'm sorry, but you worship Brigid, right?"

With a slight wince, Éanna corrected, hardly above a whisper, "_Bríd_." Then, louder, "I don't understand, what are you sorry for?"

"Oh, um, I just didn't know what word it's appropriate to use."

"If you mean _worship_, yes, that is fine. You shouldn't just blurt out Her name like that, though. Even if you did pronounce it wrong."

Sue her for trying then — Hermione had assumed just calling her Bridget would have been wrong, Brigid had been her next best guess. (And it was what Lyra called her, so.) "I'm sorry, I didn't know. Why not?"

Éanna looked a little uncomfortable, shifting in his seat and tapping at his desk, but he just shrugged her apology off. It was a _weird_ shrug, starting in one shoulder and rolling across his back, but she was pretty sure that's what it was supposed to be, some of his gestures were just kind of weird. "You shouldn't speak the name of any god. If you do, they'll hear you. It doesn't mean they'll do anything bad, the Mother in particular isn't likely to, but if they aren't watching you, you can't annoy them."

"Um, I'm pretty sure that's wrong."

Brow dipping into an annoyed frown, Éanna said, "What?"

Rachel shrugged. "I don't know, Lyra made me borrow a book about high magic stuff..."

Of course she did. _Of course_ Lyra was lending out illegal books to her pet first-year. Why was she surprised, that was _exactly_ the sort of thing Lyra would do...

"...and that was talking about how Aspects or whatever are pulled toward things that interest them. I think, saying their name doesn't matter. Why should it, names are a human thing, and it's not like gods have ears anyway. They're going to know what's going on if something they think is interesting is going on, whether anyone says their name or not, and saying their name isn't going to make them pay attention to something that has nothing to do with them." Under Hermione and Éanna's gaze (his somewhat misdirected), Rachel stiffened in her chair a bit. Somewhat defensively, she added, "At least, that's what it sounded like to me, anyway."

"If you're talking about someone, doesn't that have something to do with them?"

"Well, sure, but they're going to hear that whether you say their name or not."

"I guess," Éanna said, very clearly humouring her, "but just blurting out a god's name is kind of rude, don't you think?"

Rachel considered that for a second, before shrugging. "All right." She was obviously humouring Éanna just as much as he was her, but at least they'd ended up more or less on the same page.

Though, Hermione was pretty sure Rachel was more right than she was wrong...but Éanna was _also_ right, just not for the reason he probably thought he was. If she understood how these things worked correctly, it was _thinking about_ an Aspect of Magic which could (theoretically, in the correct circumstances) attract their attention — the thought didn't need to be spoken aloud, and whether a proper name or an epithet was used seemed completely irrelevant. (Besides, an epithet was basically just another kind of name, Hermione didn't see why there should be a difference.) She decided to just note it as a cultural thing and move on. "So, the Mother, then. I don't know anything about this, what do the Mother's worshippers believe, exactly?"

Éanna frowned. "What?"

"I mean... Well, you call her the Mother, are we talking like a mother goddess sort of thing here? Like, mother to the rest of the gods, or mother to humanity..."

Hermione trailed off as Éanna just looked increasingly confused. "What are you talking about?"

...Okay. "Probably getting ahead of myself. We can just go all the way back to the beginning — there must be a creation myth, right?"

"Creation myth?"

"I mean, a story about where the world came from."

"Oh." Éanna stared above Hermione's left shoulder for a moment, slowly blinking. "What does that have to do with anything? I thought you were muggleborn, muggles have the answer to that already."

"No, I mean, people who worship the Mother, where do they think the world came from."

"I don't understand."

Rachel laughed. Hermione wasn't certain which of them she was laughing at, but she had the creeping suspicion it was both of them. Resisting the urge to rub her own forehead, Hermione said, "I'm not certain I understand, either."

"I think you're making a little inductive fallacy, Miss Granger."

All three of them jumped, whirling around to face the left side of the room — Rachel jumped badly enough she nearly fell out of her chair, managed to get up to her feet instead, the duplicated chair tipping over sideways. Leaning against one of the bookshelves, his arms loosely crossed low under his chest, was a young man, too old to be Hogwarts age but probably not much older. He had thick black hair, tousled as though he'd just been out in the wind, soft face split with a smile. He was clothed in dueling garb, brownish leather and cloth in green and white.

Hermione recognised the uniform of Saoirse Ghaelach's militia instantly. It'd be hard not to, a few of them had been hanging around the castle for a week now.

"God dammit!" Rachel hissed. "Does _nobody_ in this bloody place ever _use the door_?"

The man's smile twitched. "Yes, well, sorry about that. I would have walked, but I wasn't certain where I was going." That made no sense at all... "Miss Granger, if you wanted to ask someone about _an Tuath Dé_, you went to the wrong person. No offence meant to you of course, Éanna Ó Caoimhe."

Éanna had recovered the quickest of all of them, though he twitched slightly at the use of his full name. "Ah, don't worry about it, _a Fháidh_."

"Mind if I take over here?" the man said, levering himself off the bookshelf with a shoulder.

"Not even a little bit."

A wand appearing in his hand, the man conjured a plain wooden chair just next to Éanna's desk, sort of across from Hermione and Rachel (who'd righted her chair and sat down again, still churlishly glaring at the stranger) but at an angle he could still see all three of them. As he sat, swishing his cloak out of the way, Hermione asked, "Excuse me, who are you?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, where are my manners today?" He aped a florid bow, which looked even more silly than it would have if he weren't already sitting down. "Fionn Ingham, _fáidh don Mháthair_ — that's usually translated _priest of the Mother_, in the English."

...Oh.

Well, she guessed a Gaelic white mage was _exactly_ the person she should be asking about how they see Magic, wasn't he?

"Um." Hermione hesitated for a moment, considering how exactly to say what she needed to say. "I'm sorry, but is that really a...wise thing to just tell random people? Being a white mage is Anathema in this country, you know."

"Technically, it's not Anathema at Hogwarts for now — most I.C.W. nations do attempt to monitor people with a more intimate relationship with Magic, yes, but it's not Anathema. And if they decide they want to arrest me for being a white mage _after_ the Tournament is over, well," Ingham said, eyes dancing, "they can certainly _try_, I guess."

Hermione had absolutely no idea how to respond to that.

"And besides, I'm not just telling any _random_ people. Éanna here belongs to _an tuath Caoimhe_ — the previous, hmm, you would say _high priestess_, I think, she was a Caoimhe. They are a rather important family back home, you know. And of course you two are close to a priestess of a trickster god of some kind, and you, Miss Granger, are only here interrogating poor Éanna about the Mother because you have every intention of studying high magic — so you shouldn't go throwing stones."

She couldn't help herself, Hermione had to say, "Eris isn't a trickster god," but even as she said it... It wasn't a _terrible_ description, was it? She certainly did like messing things up, and judging by Lyra's behaviour she seemed to prefer to target people who were a little too full of themselves — which wasn't a surprise, the ancient Greeks had had a whole thing about hubris.

"_Eris_?" Ingham's smile vanished, eyes widening a little. "Huh. Well, that explains a lot, doesn't it? I suppose we'll just have to hope Dumbledore doesn't fuck up as badly as Paris did."

Yes, Hermione had wondered the same thing ever since she'd found out what Lyra had done with the Tournament, sending out those letters months ago. She should probably be having a crisis of conscience right now over whether she should be doing anything to stop Lyra from starting trouble, but she suspected the damage was already done. After all, Eris's role in the story had been finished the moment she'd chucked an apple at someone's head — everything that had followed had been the result of people's stupid decisions, without any outside coercion. Eris (Lyra) only set up the dominoes, someone else was supposed to knock them over. "How do you know Dumbledore's the one holding the Apple?"

Ingham shrugged. "Who else?"

...Good point.

"Anyway, back to what I was saying a moment ago. The misunderstanding you two were having is a consequence of holding to a different definition of the category of _religion_. You have assumptions, Miss Granger, about what exactly a religion looks like, which colours your approach to learning about those of us who still acknowledge _an Tuath Dé_."

Going _all_ the way back, then. Hermione wrenched herself away from worrying if it was _really_ okay some random stranger — who also happened to be a white mage, apparently — knew what Lyra was, and how much of a mess this damn Tournament was probably going to turn out to be, back around to the original purpose of this conversation. "Right. So, you're saying there isn't a Gaelic creation myth."

Fionn shook his head, spreading his hands. "And this is not a modern innovation, so far as we can tell — it isn't that we stopped teaching an old origin myth when we learned it must be false. To our best guess, there simply never was one.

"One of the major differences between our traditions and the religions you're probably more familiar with is a matter of scale. Most major religions consider themselves the sole holders of some universal truth. The Abrahamic faiths — Judaism, Christianity, Islam, Bahá'í—"

Hermione felt an eyebrow twitch with surprise — she hadn't expected a pureblood mage to know Bahá'í existed. It post-dated the Statute, after all. Even most British muggles had never heard of it before...

"—Indic religions — Jains, Hindus, Buddhists, Sikhs — Iranian traditions like Mazdayasna, various polytheistic faiths over history, even fuzzier things like Daoism, they all tend to make some large-scale, universalist claims. _We_ know how the world came to be, and _we_ know how it will end, _we_ know how things material and spiritual truly function, _we_ know the ultimate purpose of life, _we_ know what happens after death. _We_ hold true knowledge, and everybody else is wrong — in some cases, depending on the eschatology of the religion in question, everybody else is not only wrong, but doomed to damnation or oblivion for their ignorance.

"For whatever reason, this sort of mindset never really developed among the Gaels and Brits of these islands. Which is not unique, truly — there are a number of religions throughout the world who do not make these sorts of claims. It appears that developing writing, and more particularly a complex legalistic bureaucracy, lends itself to the kind of religion you're more familiar with. Such absolutist claims about the world and life and death and morality are much less common where certain trappings of organised civilisation developed later on in history."

Well, Hermione was sort of vaguely aware of that. She just knew very little about those... She wanted to say _less advanced_ religions, but that sounded rather ethnocentric, didn't it? Point was, the religions she was most familiar with were Judeo-Christian, which were rather legalistic in their rhetoric about a lot of things — a legacy of the religious judicial system in ancient Persian Israel, she assumed — and ancient Greco-Roman polytheism, which had a..._sort of_ similar administration around it. (Relatively speaking, of course.) Civilisations that didn't have an equivalent to that kind of state...religion..._thing_, she was far less familiar with.

So she guessed that did make sense. It just hadn't occurred to her the mages' traditions were so different...though it probably should have. But, something about that bothered her. "There _are_ myths, though. I mean, I don't know much about them off the top of my head, but I know the pre-Christian Irish people didn't, just, think they were always here."

Fionn smiled. "Well, of course there are stories about how the people of Éire and Britain came to be the way they are, but that is not the same thing. Our ancestors have always known they were not originally native to this land, that the ancient Gaels came here at some point in the past and mixed with people who were already here. Interestingly, muggle archaeology backs this up — Celtic-speakers didn't come to these islands until relatively late, twenty-five hundred years or so ago. The stories tell of successive invasions of both Éire and Britain by different peoples with different technology speaking different languages, which we suspect is a sort of mythologised cultural memory of actual pre-historical events.

"_But_," Fionn said, raising a single finger and smirking a little, "in these stories it is never said where exactly it is human beings come from in the first place. There is no god among _an Tuath Dé_ who is credited with creating the world, or with creating the human race. They guide and teach us, yes, but we already existed before they came along. What we know of the nature of magic in the modern day suggests _we_ created _them_, however unintentionally, and not the other way around."

"Okay." That was a little...odd. And also directly subverted the psychological explanation of religion Hermione had been led to expect — what was the point of myth, if not to explain away old mysteries of the natural world? That the Irish didn't have any of those kinds of myths, and at the least believed they _never_ had, was just kind of strange. "So, how does it work exactly, then?"

"Hmm, that's very broad, isn't it." Fionn hummed, looked up to the ceiling for a second, his fingers tapping at his knee. "Well, general terms, then. The average Gael will, usually, observe three gods of their choice, who each fulfill a certain purpose in their lives. These are colourfully referred to as one's earth, sun, and moon — this is just poetry, and doesn't really mean anything, but it's a useful device to look at it all through.

"The 'earth' god is a role that might seem very familiar to you. The best comparison to the usual tropes would be an agricultural deity — concerned with the health of the land, and the weather, and the harvest, that sort of thing — though it is somewhat more complicated than that. You see, as a god of the land, that land _belongs_ to them, and you need their permission to use it. There is a certain logic to this, when you remember the Gaels were not originally from here — presumably, it's something held over from the migration. Traditionally, whatever local leader there might be was considered married to whoever the local god was. And this was very literal — after being selected as the chief or the king or whatever the term was at the time, there would be what was very much like an ordinary wedding ceremony. The union was even expected to be consummated."

"Wait, wait," Rachel blurted out, an odd, twisted look on her face. "Are you saying this earth god person would actually _show up_, and your king or whatever would..."

It wasn't actually _that_ far-fetched, Hermione thought. Sacred marriages were a phenomenon that had existed in several ancient civilisations — there's the ancient Greek concept of _hieros gamos_, the relationship between the king and the high priestess of Inanna in certain Mesopotamian city-states, the idea of sacred prostitution is probably related somehow. In fact, Hermione recalled there was a common theory (fuzzy from a lack of primary sources) that the pre-Christian Celts had had the _exact_ practice Fionn was describing right now. Of course, Hermione had assumed that was all just myth, _obviously_, but now that she had more familiarity with high magic... Well, it wasn't _at all_ out of the question that an Aspect could have manifested somehow to...consummate the union.

However bloody _weird_ the thought of ancient kings having sex with _literal gods_ was.

Fionn smiled, warm and amused — by the glare Rachel returned it with, she probably assumed she was being mocked somehow. "Eh, we're not certain. It's possible Áine — the most common of this sort of god, though not the only one — would appear in one form or another, directly. Older myths do suggest as much. Though, we suspect the practice changed with time — eventually, as property and family became more important, also marriage alliances with other clans or tribes, it was no longer very practical for a leader to separate from their spouse for the duration of their tenure, which had been expected originally. The practice did continue, but we believe they found a loophole: in some of our earliest written records, the spouses of rulers are often referred to as priests of the local god. It appears, rather than be divorced, their spouse instead entered into service to Áine. Perhaps, instead of manifesting directly, from this point Áine simply possessed their spouse for the ceremony."

Rachel was making a face again, her eyes narrowed and lip curling, looking distinctly uncomfortable. "No offence, Fionn, but magical Irishmen are bloody weird."

"It's not that weird, actually." All three of them turned to look at her (Éanna only in her general direction), Hermione shrugged. "It's an agricultural metaphor. Planting a seed, if you catch my meaning."

"Ew," Rachel muttered, scowling.

Luckily, Fionn didn't seem to be offended, still just warmly smiling. "You're not wrong, Miss Granger. There were two major ceremonies involving Áine. One was, of course, this sort of marriage with the local leader. It was a confirmation, in a way — there were ways Áine had of expressing Her disapproval, which would often result in the leader being immediately replaced. But there was another one corresponding with the beginning of planting season. These days it is normally celebrated on or immediately after _Lá Fhéile na Mháthar_, or 'Imbolc'," with an odd sense of sarcasm on the name, "though historically it would have varied depending on the local geography and the weather. This ceremony is similar in some ways to the other, though in a rather different context than a wedding."

"A fertility ritual," Hermione suggested.

Fionn shrugged. "Something like that, yes. The intention is, again, asking permission to use the land, and also to ensure there would be good weather and healthy crops. Áine could, again, express Her disapproval, which in this case usually resulted in very bad luck for farmers, never ends well."

"_Is_."

His head tilting slightly, Fionn turned back to Rachel. "I'm sorry?"

"When talking about the bit with kings and whatnot, you used past tense, but sometimes you use present tense. People still..." Rachel trailed off, clearly not certain how to refer to a _religious sex ritual_. "It still happens?"

"Well, not in the way it once did, certainly. You wanted to know how Gaels in the modern day see these things, Miss Granger," Fionn said, nodding to her. "People do still worship Áine, yes — and it is almost always Áine now, traditions centred on other local gods have mostly died off — though it doesn't look quite the same as the others. In communities that do any farming of any kind, they do still practise a variation of the old ritual, though it is normally...less extreme. High magic is illegal now, after all, and this ritual with Áine is very public, and in its original form very _obvious_. Though it is still a public sex ritual, of course, the high magic parts of it are just toned down a bit."

Rachel huffed, practically squirming in her seat. She'd get used to the idea that some mages did this sort of thing eventually. Hell, she didn't think anybody had told her about Walpurgis yet, and that was _much_ worse — at least this thing with Áine had a rational purpose to it.

"There are also things at the harvest, though these mostly involve blessings of seed corn, sprinkling milk mixed with ash over the fields, and many drunken toasts to Áine's generosity, much more innocuous. Aside from that, people rarely think about Áine much at all. You will find altars to Áine at the centre of any Gaelic village, but they're rarely ever used, and She doesn't have a priesthood, as such. There are a few out there, I suppose, but not many, and they aren't organised. Áine still has importance to people involved in farming, or who need a particular kind of weather for any reason, and there are a few little things involving construction and land use, but everyone else hardly spends much effort on Her.

"It's the other two kinds of gods people spend most of their time on." Fionn turned to Éanna, his smile vanishing, his voice going low and serious. "I'm going to be talking about the Watcher now, if you'd like me to deafen you for this bit."

Éanna didn't look up, focusing on the essay he'd been trying to get through while they'd been talking. "Just leave me silenced, _a Fháidh_. I am trying to get some work done here."

"We could go somewhere else, if you like."

"If I can't hear you anyway, why would I care?"

His lips twitching, Fionn sketched a single rune in the air before it vanished with a flick of his fingers, a paling snapping into existence with a tingle of magic. "I'm certain you've heard of the Watcher before, Miss Granger, Miss Campbell. To go back to the metaphor I used a while ago, one of the three main kinds of gods are 'moon' gods. This category are less figures that are worshipped out of respect, but out of _fear_ — people invoke them not to attract their favour, but to repel their ire, or that of the forces that follow them. These are, unsurprisingly, often compared to gods of death in other belief systems, though they aren't truly.

"The most common of these is usually called the Watcher, a euphemism used out of fear for speaking Her name. Which is sort of funny, I suppose, because the only name we have for Her was originally itself an epithet: _Morríoghain_, meaning something like the _queen of monsters_ or the _dread queen_ — the etymology is sort of up in the air. For reasons we'll get to, She's also sometimes called the Queen of Nightmares, though not usually by Gaels."

It took Hermione a second to figure out what to say. Because she _had_ heard of this one, obviously. "You mean the goddess of war and fate? The one that likes crows."

Fionn shrugged, wiggled his hand in the air. "The Watcher is very complicated for one major reason: there is also a living person called _an Mhorríoghain_. This living person is also where the name Queen of Nightmares comes from, by conflation between the two.

"You are familiar with metamorphs, yes? and how they don't die from old age? Well, because of this, some metamorphs are _very_ old. I'm sure you've heard of the Green Lady of Egypt. She was instrumental in the original formulation of warding and enchanting, and thereby pretty much single-handedly invented the concept of magic theory — this happened about five thousand years ago, at least, and she still lives today. A small number of metamorphs are believed to be _older than civilisation as we know it_. There's the Queen Mother in Asia, the Lonely Man in America.

"And the Queen of Nightmares in Éire. Many of these people, it's very hard to guess how old they are. People didn't exactly use regular calendars until quite recently, and the metamorphs themselves often have no idea — there is a limit to how much memory the human brain can contain, things start to get very fuzzy after a while. In some of her own writings, _an Mhorríoghain_ claims to have very distant memories of first arriving in the land that eventually became Éire. Her people were wandering westward, following the sun, and eventually came to what seemed to be the edge of the world. They must have travelled very far, hundreds and hundreds of miles, over the course of years.

"She walked. To _Éire_."

That... That was _impossible_.

"She said it was very cold, then, like a winter that never ended. Her people lived at the edge of a great field of ice, living off of mammoths and elk, boars and seals, fighting off bears and wolves. She said she used to raise foxes, black and white ones. Eventually, the ice receded, the mammoths and the elk died out, and the land grew warm and wet. Her people started to settle down, but it made her antsy, so she left to wander on her own. She was surprised when she found she needed to make a boat, because the end of the world was no longer connected to the mainland."

"You mean..." Hermione trailed off, swallowed to try to loosen up her throat. She felt oddly shaky, part of her, just, failed to process the scale of what they were... "You mean, she came to Ireland..._during the Ice Age_."

Still smiling, as though he had little sense of the gravity of what he was saying, Fionn said, simply, "Yes."

"But... But that must have been eight thousand years ago."

"Mm, closer to ten or eleven, I think."

"...You're saying there's a living person in Ireland who's _ten thousand years old_."

Fionn shrugged. "Her own vague memories of her history seem to suggest as much. She doesn't remember that far back very well at all, obviously, but the general picture of it sure sounds like she wandered all the way to Éire when there were still glaciers here. She left and wandered around Europe for a bit, didn't come back until...oh, four or five thousand years ago, probably. She was specifically looking for where she'd buried her first child — having something of an existential crisis, as I understand it — but she never did find the site. The land had changed too much, you see. She's been in Éire, save for the brief excursion to the Continent, ever since."

Hermione had absolutely no idea how to process that kind of time depth. She'd heard of the Green Lady before, of course — she had been instrumental to the development of runic magic, having essentially invented it single-handedly, so she was mentioned in class now and again. Hermione had had trouble with her to begin with. Okay, the Green Lady was still around, she lived in a magical town in the Faiyum Oasis, but she _predated the pyramids of Egypt_. Take the difference in time between Hermione and, say, _Julius Caesar_ — the famous pyramids at Giza, the thing most people imagined when they thought of ancient Egypt, they had been _older to Caesar_ than Caesar was to Hermione...by a margin of about _five hundred years_. That was absurd to think about just by itself. And the Green Lady, a person who was _alive right now_, was older than _that_, by about another thousand years (nobody knew precisely). Making the Green Lady, approximately, _three times_ as old as the _Roman Republic_.

Hermione could kind of, _almost_, wrap her head around that. Like, early Egypt was to early Rome as early Rome was to modern Britain. Fine. Absurd, but fine. Then, the Green Lady would be _sort of_ like, say, the ancient Greeks for the Romans — she meant, the pre-Classical Mycenaean Greeks, from the time of the _bloody Trojan War_, the Green Lady would be sort of like the equivalent of one of the culture heroes remembered from that time. Fine. She could..._almost_ imagine that. It was completely ridiculous to imagine a person from that long ago _had been alive this whole time_, but magic was ridiculous sometimes. It wasn't completely incomprehensible.

But, if what Fionn was saying about this woman was true, she was _twice as old as that_. She could remember _hunting wooly bloody mammoths_. That was just...

_That_ was completely incomprehensible. It was making Hermione a little dizzy, honestly.

"Now," Fionn said — casually, completely ignoring both Hermione and Rachel staring at him in dumbfounded disbelief. "The thing to remember about mages is that we all slowly become more powerful with each spell we cast, as our bodies and minds adapt to the presence of magic. This process doesn't seem to ever actually stop — you do start to see decreasing returns, but when we're talking about accumulated effects over _centuries_, it hardly matters. So, the truly _old_ metamorphs start to become overwhelmingly powerful, by the standards of ordinary mages. Those who were already ancient at the time of the ancients were, in fact, often worshipped as gods in physical form.

"And _an Mhorríoghain_ has an extra bit of intimidation potential. See, she's also a natural legilimens." Finally, the significance of what he was saying actually seemed to be occurring to him. His voice had dropped a bit, going somewhat more solemn, the smile gone. "A natural legilimens who not infrequently subsumed the minds of the people she killed, back in more violent times. Repeatedly, over the course of _millennia_. _An Mhorríoghain_ might or might not be the most _magically_ powerful being on this earth, but she _is_ the most powerful mind mage in all of history. It is said that, not only can she snuff out the mind of any mortal as easily as she might step on an ant, but she can read and influence people's minds from a distance. A _great_ distance.

"This is where that title _Queen of Nightmares_ comes in. You've heard of the art of dreamwalking, yes?"

"Ah..." Hermione swallowed, her voice came out rather thinner and shakier than she was quite happy with. Not that she felt she could be blamed for that, the idea of someone this powerful even _existing_ was, just, unnerving. (She understood why Fionn had offered to deafen Éanna now.) "Yes, I have. It's, um, when legilimens wander into the mind of another person in their sleep. Supposedly, if they're aware of what's happening, they can control what's going on — much like lucid dreaming, except both the legilimens and the subject will be experiencing it together."

Which was _very_ neat, Hermione thought. When Harry had explained what was going on with him sleep-legilimising the Dark Lord — given as his justification for sleeping with Blaise down in Slytherin, which Hermione suspected was at least partially just a convenient excuse — Hermione had immediately wondered if there was any way for non-legilimens to do that. Not only did such a thing have potential therapeutic uses, but also... Well, it just sounded _fun_, didn't it, to do whatever you wanted with someone in a context with no true limits and no real consequences.

Hermione would admit the larger part of her interest in the subject was the idea that she could have shared lucid dreams with Lyra, where they could do whatever they wanted without Hermione having to worry about hurting anyone, or what impression she was giving other people, or the morality of whatever they were doing. If only to feel out how she felt about all kinds of things, and also just for fun. She even thought it might be _theoretically_ possible to modify the enchantment they were poking at to exploit Lyra's omniglottalism to easily spread languages to third parties to act as a bridge between their minds to accommodate such a thing...though of course at least one of them would actually have to learn how to lucid dream, and they would need Eris's cooperation.

She still hadn't mentioned the idea to Lyra yet. Partially because, if she was being honest, she suspected Lyra would come up with some kind of absurd solution instantly — as fun as it was to think about, the idea of _doing_ it was actually a little intimidating.

But anyway, Fionn was talking about the single most terrifying person Hermione had ever heard described, she should probably pay attention to the conversation. (No matter how unnerving it was.)

"Well, ordinarily, a dreamwalker will just wander into the mind of the person closest to them. There is a range to these magics, you see. But with how powerful _an Mhorríoghain_ is, her mind can reach _very_ far. Many of the stories about _an Mhorríoghain_ involve her entering the mind of a sleeping person, to impart advice or to give a warning. Or, in extreme cases, to plague them with imagined horrors, psychologically torturing them while they're asleep, and thus at their most vulnerable — undetected, through their wards, often from hundreds of miles away. It is said she can completely destroy her victim's mind if she wishes, drive them insane or kill them outright. From a great distance. In their sleep.

"There are very good reasons the Romans hardly stepped foot in Gaelic lands — they were the ones who gave her the name _Queen of Nightmares_."

There was a short beat of silence.

"Bloody _hell_," Rachel muttered. Which about summed it up, Hermione thought. "People like that actually _exist_? Like, in the real world, not just stories and shite?"

Fionn nodded, slow and solemn. "Yes, _an Mhorríoghain_ certainly exists. I've been in a room with her once, in fact, though I never got very close to her. Honestly, even being a good dozen metres away from her was viscerally terrifying — and this was with her being civil, she wasn't _doing_ anything, she's overwhelming just existing. Imagine the combined magical and mental presence of our guests from Miskatonic, but like five times worse."

...Right, Hermione could imagine that. Actually, no, she _couldn't_ imagine that — Hermione thought the Miskatonites, when they weren't hiding it (somehow), were quite intimidating enough, thank you very much — but she got the idea. She was going to go out on a limb and assume she very much did not want to meet this person ever.

Luckily, Fionn moved on without Hermione saying anything, because she had no idea what she possibly _could_ say. "Now, as you might imagine, ancient people did sort of end up worshipping her. It probably would have started as small things, little bits of ritual to beg for her favour or just appease her, but their regard for her eventually developed a character one might call legitimately religious. As Magic does, the more people cast this idea into it, the more it took on its shape, until this idea took on a life of its own. In time, there was a true goddess, a self-aware Aspect of Magic, modeled off of the living person — the theory is this is how _all_ the gods developed, _an Mhorríoghain_ the goddess is unique only in that the person who originally inspired Her is still around, instead of slowly evolving through cultural memory passed down generations.

"You'll find, because of this, Gaels will often refer to the woman and the goddess interchangeably. For one, gods are relatively limited in the effects they can have on the physical world — they are extremely powerful, yes, but they need some kind of conduit to affect things here. _An Mhorríoghain_ the person is not limited in this way, but she also involves herself in mortal affairs less than does _an Mhorríoghain_ the goddess. The Watcher's priesthood is one of the largest in Gaelic society, and it is commonly suspected that She uses Her servants to push us in one direction or the other with some regularity. That we are all, unknowingly, pieces in a game She's been playing for generations. And so She is called the Watcher — because She is always watching, whether waking or in dreams, to ends we cannot possibly imagine."

"And...people worship this person." Rachel sounded more than a little disturbed, her eyes narrowed and lip curling. "I mean, no offence, but this Watcher lady sounds kind of...Satan-y."

Well, at least Hermione wasn't the one saying it.

Fionn let out another unphased hum, shoulders tilting in a shrug. "That's sort of complicated, honestly. The whole 'moon' category we're on here — and, much like with Áine, it is almost always the Watcher, though I'd say even more so — is veneration for the purpose of _repelling_ evil or misfortune. This may take the form of begging the Watcher Herself to not decide to mess with you, sure, but people _also_ ask the Watcher to protect them from _other_ people, or monsters or faeries or just bad luck, what have you. Our equivalent to saying _god damn it_ invokes the Watcher — even for people who don't worship Her at all, it's just the idiom now — though it is a much more extreme thing to say than it sounds just translating it. In general invoking gods, even casually in conversation, is a much bigger deal to people who truly believe they exist, as most Gaels do.

"See, _an Mhorríoghain_ might be extremely powerful and more than a bit scary, both of them, but that doesn't mean they're _evil_. People who use the Powers model you're familiar with usually classify the Watcher as either a Dark kind of Fate — a god of Doom, for lack of a better word — or a god of Death — and not of _the Dead_, but the _act of dying_, particularly through violence — but this isn't truly accurate. It'd be more appropriate to call Her a guardian, if a scary one.

"Partially, this is something carrying over from _an Mhorríoghain_ the person. She has done a _lot_ of damage in the past, yes, but this was typically in reaction to something, either defending someone important to her or enacting vengeance on their behalf. Particularly, her children — _an Mhorríoghain_ doesn't have children very often, but they do turn up now and again. Éanna's family was founded by one of her granddaughters, in fact. Anyway, what violence she has committed, historically, was most often defensive, or at least provoked, however disproportionate most would consider it. She once wiped an entire clan off the face of the earth in reaction to the murder of one of her children, the stories tend to go like that.

"_An Mhorríoghain_ the goddess, on the other hand, is more considered a guardian of the Gaelic people as a whole — when She _does_ punish Gaels, it's usually for doing something very dishonourable. Though, Her machinations aren't always obvious. In Éire, the magical families isolated ourselves from our non-magical cousins relatively early. Which ended up coming _very_ much in handy when the Cromwells came around. They did _not_ like Catholics or pagans much, and most of Éire were one or the other — or both, it's not difficult to slot the Christian God into our traditional practices, a syncretic Gaelic-Christian belief system is actually quite common — but they had a hard time finding very many of us. In retrospect, we think it's possible the Watcher had manipulated us into isolation, to prevent much greater deaths.

"If I were to try to fit the Watcher into the Powers framework, I'd say the Infernal Power is probably the best match. Her priesthood mostly serve Her in exchange for power and knowledge, learning all sorts of magics and the secrets of the universe directly from the source. Rather like Hecate, I suppose. She's _very_ intimidating, yes, and I'd prefer to avoid attracting Her attention whenever possible, but I would hardly call Her _evil_."

...

No, Hermione. Coming to an arrangement with an Aspect of the Infernal Power in exchange for magical knowledge (and power) was...was a _bad_ idea. Yes. Bad.

However tempting that _did_ sound on the surface, it really would be a _terrible_ idea. Playing around with high magic was _not_ something to be done lightly — and it went without question that no god would just _give_ her knowledge, it would expect something in return. And backing out of a deal would be a bad, bad, bad, _bad_ idea. If nothing else, she should never put herself in a position where reneging on such a deal was even a _possibility_, just in case.

No matter how _very_ fascinating the idea might seem. It was a _bad_ one.

(Hermione was in _so_ much trouble.)

"Actually," Fionn said, his head tilting a little, "I don't think I would call _any_ of _an Tuath Dé_ evil, precisely. In other religions, evil has a purpose in their cosmology, which doesn't really exist for us. Some of _an Tuath Dé_ might be _less nice_ than others, but that doesn't mean they're _evil_. They're all teachers or guardians of some kind, when you get down to it, even the Watcher.

"Though, I'll admit that relationship is _less_ obvious with, say, Áine or _an Mhorríoghan_ than it is with the last category. In the metaphor I mentioned earlier, these would be the 'sun' gods. Though this is poetry, they're not _literally_ sun gods — the _literal_ sun gods are usually considered to be one's earth, like Áine. Confusing, I know. Anyway, _these_ gods are patrons of a sort, their entire purpose is to teach their people things. Usually things that are necessary for organised society to function, so Brits normally consider them to be Light Powers — and high magics associated with them _do_ tend to be light, though not always — exactly which Power they get labeled with depending on exactly what it is they do.

"Probably the easiest to fit in the Powers system is Airmed — She's _obviously_ an Aspect of Life, all Her priests are healers — but most of the rest don't really fit very well. There are dozens of these, sometimes particular to people in a certain profession or who practise a certain craft, but Lú and Bríd are easily the most common. Lú, called the Good King or the Artisan, is usually considered an advisor to kings and a master of enchanting, and by extension a patron of leaders of all sorts as well as enchanters and alchemists. Sometimes even authors and poets — there's an intimate connection between enchanting and the written word, as hard as it might be to cleanly define what His sphere of influence is, the logic follows. He's easiest to understand as a teacher of the things the leaders of society need to know. The sciences and the arts, yes, how to live an honourable life, to be trustworthy and dependable, but also how to be tricky, to get what your people need even if it requires the deception and manipulation of your enemies.

"Bríd, the Mother, is Lú's complement in a way — a keeper of the hearth, a master of war, and a protector of children."

"Um, maybe I'm missing something, but those seem...completely unrelated." Hermione could _sort of_ see how Lú made sense — from what little Fionn had said, it sounded a little bit like someone had taken Hermes and decided to make him king of the gods, with everything that followed from that. It was _weird_, but not hard to wrap her head around. (Especially since a lot of Irish myths involved the hero winning more through cleverness than power, a poet trickster king sounded like exactly the sort of thing they'd be into.) But, those three things Fionn had listed for Bríd, that sounded like mixing up Hestia, Ares (or probably Athena), and, what, Hera? That didn't make any sense.

Fionn just seemed amused, his seemingly constant smile turning a bit crooked. "They're more related than you might think. If we think of the Artisan as the patron of things the leaders of society need to _know_, the Mother would be the patron of things the _people_ in a society need to _do_. Bríd is often considered a goddess of fire, but specifically _harnessed_ fire — the fire of the forge and the kiln, thereby patron of smiths and potters, and the fire of the hearth, thereby patron of family and the home and a bulwark against winter. Bríd is also associated with animal husbandry — Her major holiday now was originally meant to ask Her to help breed more cows and goats and such — and thereby patron to shepherds, weavers, and tanners. She's also considered a goddess of war, but specifically _defensive_ war, and thereby a mentor to warriors and a protector of children — _especially_ the abused or orphaned, most orphanages and the like in Éire are actually run by priests of the Mother, and it's not unusual for priests to intervene to remove at-risk children from abusive homes. In fact, the current high priestess was rescued when she was a young child, seven or eight maybe, and essentially adopted by the temple in her village. _Temple_ isn't quite the right word, but you know what I mean."

"That kind of sounds like a _lot_ of things for one god to be responsible for," Rachel said, sounding rather doubtful. "I mean, if you're going to have more than one god to begin with. Isn't the whole point of having a whole bunch of them...having a whole bunch of them?"

Fionn chuckled a little. "We do think Bríd used to be smaller than she is now. We think that, long long ago, she was a goddess of fire, and of war and sex."

"And what the hell do _those_ have to do with each other?"

"Miss Campbell, it's not unusual for goddesses of war to also be associated with sex and love. Like Ishtar — not organised, methodical, strategic war, but the _madness_ of war, the violence and the chaos, and also the _madness_ of love, the lust and the thoughtless passion. We think, the old, Ishtar-like Bríd was popular enough that she overtook a lot of less prominent gods, slowly absorbing their traits as the centuries went by, changing as her worshippers, as society itself changed. The Bríd that exists today is a lot more...hmm, _civilised_, you might say, than we think she must have been in prehistoric times. Enough that, in a lot of ways, She's actually considered a patron of _civilisation itself_, one that spreads the knowledge necessary to keep organised society going, while also protecting her people from threats external and internal. It might seem odd, that the Bríd we know came out of what probably used to be a very violent figure of war and fire and chaos, but that's what happens after centuries upon centuries of change. The gods may be immortal, but they are not immutable."

Okay, that made sense, actually. Basically, as the ancient Gaels transitioned from nomadic tribes to a settled people, their war/sex goddess had been domesticated, sort of, to reflect their changed way of life. That wasn't too difficult to wrap her mind around. A very similar thing had happened with Aphrodite, actually — Hermione had read a theory that Aphrodite had actually _been_ Ishtar (or Astarte, the Phoenician equivalent), imported to Greece from the east, and that her image had been moderated over the course of centuries to be more compatible with the local culture. (The existence of old depictions of Aphrodite as armed, especially on Kythera, seemed to imply that was a good bet.) The Gaels must have done something very similar, just in a somewhat different direction.

She thought she maybe understood the general picture he was trying to get at. Maybe. "So, what you're saying is, all Gaels, or the ones that are actually religious, worship three gods. One that represents the land, a sort of agricultural deity, which is usually Áine, one that's, like, a patron or a teacher or a protector, usually Bríd or Lú — which one it is is often a matter of class, or occupational — and a third one that's so scary they scare off scary things, usually the Morrigan."

Nodding in agreement, Fionn's lips were twitching with an amused smirk — probably at her description of the Morrigan. "Yep, that's about how it works. There are a whole bunch of others out there, but those are the most common by a mile and a half."

"And they don't really fit into the Powers at all? Are they really Light or Dark, even?"

"They don't fit into the Powers, no, but it's slightly more complicated than that." Fionn shrugged. "See, high magic tends to be polarised, just by default, and you can sort of say a god is Light or Dark just by observing what rituals that invoke them come out like. Using that standard, we can say that Áine is _definitely_ Light, the Mother and the Artisan are _almost always_ Light, and the Watcher is _usually_ Dark. You _can_ craft a ritual invoking the Mother that comes out dark, and you _can_ craft a ritual invoking the Watcher that comes out light, but neither is very common. You can't really say they make sense thought of as this or that Power, though. Áine could _sort of_ be put in with the Lively Power, I suppose. Some scholars describe the Artisan as a god of Order and Knowledge, and the Watcher as Fate and Death, but those descriptions of them aren't really very good — they're almost hilariously wrong, honestly, based on outsiders misunderstanding what they're about.

"You can sort of call them Light or Dark if you want to, but _we_ don't think of them that way. The Mother is the Mother, and the Watcher is the Watcher; they can be thought of as complimentary mirrors of each other, in a way, but that is because of who they are and what they guide their priests to do, not because one is Light and the other Dark, by definition. Whether a bit of magic feels light or dark is an artifact of the intent of the person crafting it, not a consequence of some big metaphysical or philosophical...thing. Does that make sense?"

"I..._think_ so." From what she understood of the Powers model thing, the original use was to categorise the purpose of a ritual, so a ritualist could better understand what they were trying to accomplish, and be certain who they wanted to invoke to do what. The 'Powers' were really just different kinds of magic a person could _do_, not entities in themselves. The people who'd created the model had associated different Aspects with the Powers as hints for which gods they could invoke to do what they wanted — the original intent wasn't that the different gods were really _part_ of the Power they were Aspects of, just that they had a hand in that kind of magic.

But, well, as Fionn had said, gods are not immutable. Magic Itself reacted to the concept of the Powers model, and in time began to learn how to reflect it. Ritualists now actually _could_ explicitly invoke one of the Powers, and have Magic respond as expected, even though that probably hadn't been possible at the time. From what Lyra said, Aspects associated with the same Power were connected, in a way, even if they weren't the same being, so it was possible they'd drifted together over the last centuries...or, perhaps, they'd _always_ been associated, due to their similar spheres of influence, that might predate the idea of the Powers. The point was, it wasn't unusual that the Irish gods didn't really fit in the Powers model — the model was intended to describe the _practice of ritual_, not the actual nature of Magic, if that made sense.

Hermione had the feeling Eris was actually unusual in how _well_ she fit into the idea of the Chaotic Power, which might be because she technically _post-dated_ the invention of the concept. According to Lyra, Eris had developed out of the idea of Chaos as defined by the Powers model, augmented by modern attitudes about personal freedom and the like, so it wasn't a surprise Eris fit within the model so well.

Which meant, so far as these things went, Eris was actually a _very young_ goddess. Lyra said Eris said she wasn't certain, but she couldn't be older than three hundred years or so. That might seem old to an ordinary person, but Fionn had implied the Watcher was _easily_ four or five _thousand_ years old, and possibly older, and Lyra claimed Death — the Deathly Power was technically all one entity, but Lyra always called it Persephone — was _as old as the human race itself_. (Possibly older, it depended on how self-aware precursor species were.)

By godly standards, Eris was practically a baby.

...Which made the thought of much older, presumably _more powerful_ gods having dedicants walking around even more unsettling than it had been before. Great.

Thankfully, Rachel picked up the conversation before the silence could stretch on too awkwardly long. "So, what, your religion is just asking gods to do things for you and teach you things?" There was something about Rachel's voice that sounded a bit off, though Hermione wasn't sure what. Like she didn't really believe him...or maybe she was just a little bit jealous — after all, she would have been raised Christian, and God doesn't exactly take very active role in his worshipper's lives.

"Mm, how much influence _an Tuath Dé_ actually have on our lives is a matter of debate. The gods are powerful, yes, but they are not physical beings — directly affecting the physical world requires...let's call it _leverage_. Affecting physical things is much easier _with_ a physical thing. The gods can _guide_ events, some, with little nudges here and there, and you can lend them the leverage necessary to pull off bigger things through the use of ritual, and gods can provide knowledge and advice in dreams. But the average person has very little contact with the gods. Ritual can be very dangerous, and you have to get a god's attention before they'll take it upon themselves to visit you.

"The exception, of course, is people like me." Fionn paused for a moment, eyes tipped up to the ceiling and biting his lip, fingers tapping on his knee. "Well, let's do this. I grew up in a family that worships the Mother, primarily. There are traditions that go with that, things to do with certain holidays, rituals around various things — making things, life events, marriage and childbirth especially, but also educational and professional milestones, all kinds of things. I mean, _cultural_ ritual, things you do because it's tradition, not _magical _ritual, though there are some of those too.

"Anyway, something that's _very_ common is called welcoming the dawn. Every morning, you light a candle, and thank the Mother for watching over you while you slept, and ask for good luck for the coming day. It doesn't _do_ anything, really, it's a prayer and not a proper ritual. It's supposed to be done alone, but children who are too young do it with their mother. Mine got sort of messed up a little bit — when I was still very little, my parents got divorced, and I stayed with my father's family. So I started trying to do it by myself younger than I was supposed to.

"But I didn't really know the proper prayers, see. I just made stuff up. And I would just...chatter. Trying to _talk_ to Her."

He wasn't saying... "Did you do your dedication when you were a _little kid?"_ Did that happen very often? There was Lyra, and she'd implied Cassie was a white mage, had been most of her life...

"Oh, no, I was the usual age. What happened was... Well, the candle started to talk _back_. Little whispers, not really clear _words_, exactly, it's hard to explain." Rather like the Goblet, Hermione assumed, more impression than language. And probably not _nearly_ as loud — if it gave him a migraine every time, she doubted Fionn would have kept doing it. "When I told my family the dawn spoke to me, they thought I was just being a silly little kid at first, but eventually one of my aunts, also a priest of the Mother, realised what was happening.

"See, it's kind of hard for me to say what's _normal_ for a Gaelic mage to do, because I'm not really _normal_. From the moment my family realised what was happening, I was no longer expected to participate in anything observing the Artisan or the Watcher or Áine — in fact, I was expected _not_ to. Because, if the Mother speaks to me, that means I'm one of _Hers_. I already had the favour of one god, so there was no point seeking the favour of any others."

"How common is that? I mean..." Hermione glanced at Rachel for a second — she hadn't been in the know before, as far as she knew, about what Lyra was. She'd hardly reacted when Fionn had mentioned Eris and Lyra, though, so maybe Rachel knew more than Hermione had thought. It was...probably fine, to talk about this in front of her. She'd already heard plenty of incriminating things by now anyway... "A lot of Brits don't even think the Powers are _real_ anymore, you know. Lyra has to hide it, and she knows about a couple other black and white mages — she hasn't told me who, but I think it's just a couple — so she's under the impression it's very rare."

"It's more common than you probably think — just, Brits have made high magic _very_ illegal, so people tend to keep it to themselves." Fionn shrugged, as though the fact that under British law he could technically receive a _summary death sentence_ — at the hands of _any random Auror_ who figured out what he was, at _any moment_ — was a matter of little consequence. (Hermione wasn't surprised, Lyra was equally cavalier about it.) "It's not common enough it's considered _normal_, exactly. It's considered, um, a noble calling, let's say. Cases like mine, where the god pursues the priest and not the other way around, that's considered a pretty big deal — it's a _huge_ honour to be picked, for the priest and their family. And, there aren't so many of us that there are priests, just, all over the place, but there _are_ enough for us to organise, a bit.

"The big priesthoods, like the Mother's, there are two different kinds of priests, called _na saoithe_ and _na fáithe_ — literally, sages and prophets. _Na saoithe_ are also sometimes called _na draoithe_ — druids — but that term is mostly just used in legends and stories these days, not for real, living people. Now, _na saoithe_ are the big, important people. They manage local schoolhouses and orphanages, and various other properties of the priesthood, they conduct the big, public rituals. Some of them will attach themselves to important people, and sort of act as personal advisors, protecting them and helping them.

"_Na fáithe_, on the other hand, don't have the same prestige. We tend to just wander around and do our own thing. I've been one since my induction when I was fifteen and, after I was finished with my lessons under _na saoithe_, I was set loose to do whatever it was I was led to do. I taught a seminar in ward-crafting at the Academy in Éire for a year or so, and then I wandered the island, enchanting, teaching, healing. That's pretty normal, for _fáithe_.

"After a couple years, I fell in with Saoirse. I can't say why I did, it just...seemed the thing to do. I've sort of attached myself to Síomha, in a way, like how certain _saoithe_ attach themselves to leaders and influential people. In fact, there are other priests of the Mother who call me _a shaoi_ now, though I _really_ don't think I've earned it. And I'll stay with Saoirse, helping Síomha and doing my thing, until the Mother pulls me somewhere else."

...So, a lot like how Lyra just poked her nose into whatever jumped out at her, but instead of fucking things up for the hell of it, just...helping them. Somehow, Hermione had thought serving a real, _actual_ god would have been more complicated than that. It was almost disappointing, in a way, but Hermione really shouldn't have expected anything else — one thing that had been drilled in over and over since her introduction to the magical world was how surprisingly mundane they could make _literal magic_.

From there, they wrapped up pretty quickly. Hermione and Rachel both had a few little questions, about how much the Gaels actually had to do with their gods, what the priesthoods _did_, exactly. Most of it was...well, surprisingly mundane, as the magical world tended to be. Sure, little community schools and clinics were largely run by people who had _literal gods whispering into their dreams_, but that didn't change how anything worked on a day-to-day basis, or at least not enough for it to amount to that much of a difference. Most of the priesthoods, from the way Fionn talked about them, they could be understood pretty easily as just an ordinary mutual aid society. Just, with magic. Perfectly normal, really.

Which, she didn't know why she'd expected it to _not_ be normal, when she thought about it — once upon a time, white and black mages having some significant role in societies all over the world _had_ been normal. From that perspective, the modern restrictions on high magic was what was strange, society as she knew it now was anomalous.

(Of course, that was also true of the muggle world, in a lot of ways. Thinking about the modern day in historical context could be weird sometimes.)

Before long, Fionn lifted his paling deafening Éanna, and they all left. Fionn had answered _some_ of the questions she'd had, but that whole conversation had really just highlighted how little she knew about these things. Hermione had some reading to do, she thought...from _older_ sources, preferably, before attitudes had turned against high magic. Unfortunately, very few of those books would be in English — there might be some old enough, but they'd probably be in, like, Chaucerian Middle English, which was a bloody pain to read. But, French spelling hadn't changed that much (though the pronunciation had), and of course Latin would be pretty much the same, but she'd need a dictionary for that, which would be an even _bigger_ pain, so French would be ideal. She should drop by the Bookstore and see if Anomos knew of anything...

"So, is Lyra one of these weird priest people then? That's what it sounded like."

Hermione froze in the middle of the hallway, blinked down at Rachel, the younger girl staring curiously up at her. And let out a long, frustrated groan. Apparently Rachel _hadn't_ known about Eris, _this_ was going to be fun...

She would wonder when Lyra would learn to clean up her own damn messes, but she didn't have to ask. The answer was _never_.

* * *

[The existence of old depictions of Aphrodite as armed, especially on Kythera, seemed to imply that was a good bet.] — _There's some conjecture, by both ancient people and modern scholars, that the cult of Aphrodite originated on the Greek island of Kythera. You know the popular myth, that Aphrodite just bubbled out of the ocean and drifted to shore? That shore is usually said to have been Kythera. There was a temple to her there, old even to the ancients, and interestingly she was depicted as a warrior, with armor and spear and shield. The general assumption is that the temple was originally built to Astarte, but gradually Hellenized over a few centuries to become Aphrodite._

_The Ionian Greeks later Flanderised her into a flighty sex bunny, because ancient Athenians were misogynist bastards. Silly girl, war and state power are for men! — Lysandra_

_(Fuck the patriarchy!)_

_Really, Maïa? You're the one who totally dropped the secrecy ball on this one..._

_So, reading through this chapter, I couldn't help but come up with Lyra's responses to 'What can you tell me about...?' So:_

_Aine — er...she's kind of like Gaia or Demeter, I guess. Just...kinda always there. Doing her thing._

_The Morrigan — If you annoy your uncles badly enough, they'll drag you over to Ireland and beg her to eat you. Oh! She was probably the one who rewound time when Angel and Sarah destroyed New England that one time, yeah I can see why she'd actually listen to **her**, I wouldn't want to piss her off, either. Um. She's probably in Ireland, somewhere. She doesn't get out much. She's probably about the closest thing there's ever been to an Avatar of Magic Itself, I guess, or maybe Death as the Ultimate Inevitability, you know, eternal and existing in the collective consciousness of **everyone**... No, I'm not worried about offending her, I mean, do you know how offensive most people are to gods? They **don't even believe they exist**. I might be a disrespectful child, but when you're twelve-thousand years old, who isn't?_

_Lu — Um...I think his realm of influence can be best described as "literally everything I was ever taught as a child". Yeah. That pretty much covers it._

_Brid - Yeah, she did used to be more like Ishtar. She grew up and got **boring**, like the Athenians tried to do to Artemis, but Brid liked her people too much to tell them to piss off and skip merrily back into the wilds, so now she's just...really mumsy. Like Meda got mumsy._

_(Okay, Sandra just finished her read-through, so I'll shut up and stop being silly, now.)_

_—Leigha_


	36. Unforeseen Consequences

Theo Nott wasn't exactly the most...emotional person Gin knew. Maybe _expressive_ was a better way to put it. He could, fairly usually, be depended on to be the quiet, sensible person in any particular group, and it was oddly relaxing to spend time around him for that reason. (Even despite the fact that _most_ of the time they spent together was _also_ spent trying to seriously injure each other.) He _might_ actually be Gin's favourite person to spend time around at Hogwarts, level-headed and steady in a way _literally no one else_ she knew was.

Well, maybe Candidus, but he didn't count. (And _no_, the fact that she enjoyed sitting around with Theo just hanging out even when they weren't actively practicing had _nothing_ to do with Thom's appreciation of his pointy, blond boyfriend. No matter what Lord Black might imply.)

Anyway, the point was, Theo was hardly the sort of person who was likely to over-react to his friends being ridiculously over-dramatic teenagers, or even all the madness going on at the school right now with the representatives from the ICW and Miskatonic and the Irish muggles (and the most dangerous members of Saoirse Ghaelach) and the fucking _Queen_ (and _her_ guards, who were, if anything _more terrifying_, which was kind of saying a lot, since Michael Cavan had somehow managed to get Síomha ní Ailbhe to be his personal bodyguard) all being around. Not to mention the veela floating around being all superior and meddling with people's emotions all over the place (worse than the fucking dementors, in some ways — Gin was good enough at occlumency now it didn't really bother _her_, but she could see it affecting other people), and Igor Karkaroff having the nerve to show his face in Britain again (he was a Death Eater, supposedly a spy like Snape, but he'd gotten off because the Danes had wanted to punish him themselves...and then they hadn't, at all), not to mention _Salazar Slytherin_ and someone who may or may not be Slytherin and Ravenclaw's daughter, and Black's _incredibly creepy, viscerally terrifying_ "older sister". Gin was sure she wasn't the only one who shivered when any of those three entered a room, the power that surrounded them almost overwhelming.

So when, in the wake of one of their practice bouts — Gin had actually managed to make enough progress with her small repertoire of offensive spells over the summer they could actually _have_ practice bouts without her immediately losing — lying in the middle of the dueling stage trying to catch their breath, Theo turned to her and asked whether she'd seen much of Luna lately, he had her attention.

Because, honestly, _no_, she _hadn't_ seen much of Luna. Since _summer_, really. They'd sat together at lunch a few times at the beginning of the year, but, well...they didn't have all that much in common, really. Yes, they'd known each other _forever_, but they were both kind of preoccupied by their own shite. Luna didn't understand why Gin found it so important to...make it so no one could ever hurt her again (Lord Black had advised her to be brutally honest with herself about her motivations, which was harder than she really thought it should be), and she didn't like how working through the memories Tom had left her was changing her. She'd called Gin _cynical_ more than once this year, which wasn't really _wrong_, Gin wasn't insulted, or anything, just...Luna didn't _like_ cynicism. It made her _very_ obviously uncomfortable.

And Gin knew there was some weird something or other going on with Luna and Theo and _probably_ some kind of ritual magic _something_ at Mabon, because there'd been an abrupt shift in Luna's personality around mid-September, she'd suddenly become a little happier, but also less _confident_ around other people, which Zabini said was because someone had put her talent as an empath back to sleep. Which Gin hadn't known was _possible_. Silly, maybe, to think that _impossible_ was actually a _thing_ — she knew from Tom (and Black) that the Powers could do _literally anything,_ if you knew how to ask and were willing to pay the price they wanted in return. But Luna refused to tell her anything about what had happened.

So they'd kind of drifted apart over the past couple of months, Luna doing her usual outsider Ravenclaw thing, spending lunch drawing imaginary (or as Black had suggested, extradimensional) creatures, and Gin letting herself get wrapped up in her own projects, meditating and taking notes on Tom's memories, and learning to fight with Theo and Lord Black. And of course turning around and teaching Harry and Rachel (and Justin, kind of, he was _really_ bad at offensive magic) some of the things they showed her in their "dueling study group", and trying to help Cassie and Professor Flitwick get the school dueling club back together. Not that she really thought she was much help, there. It had really only taken Cassie announcing that it was going to be a thing to make it _absurdly_ popular. Most of what _Gin _had done so far was nag people to keep coming after the first few meetings, when they'd realised that learning to fight was actually _hard work_, and _no_ they weren't going to start throwing cutting curses and battlefield transfiguration around after a week or two practicing shield charms and stunners.

She'd probably actually spent more time — more of her free time, she meant, not classes — with Éanna than Luna this term. Yes, he was kind of a teacher, but he wasn't very good at acting like one. She knew he didn't really care that some of the idiots in her class had _zero_ respect for him, but she'd still gotten annoyed enough about their taunting him about being a spaz, _to his face_, that she'd just gone ahead and hexed the shite out of them one day after class. Since apparently he wasn't going to give them detention himself, or tell Snape so he could, or something.

_She_ had gotten detention, of course — from Snape, because three of the four little shites she started a fight with were Slytherins, but since he knew _exactly_ why she'd done it, he'd let her spend her two hours taking notes on one of the texts in his office, her choice. The one she'd picked, at random, was almost _certainly_ restricted, a treatise on the use of potions and bioalchemy in medical curse-breaking that was just _fascinating_. She almost wished she'd gotten _more_ detention so she could finish reading it. (_Almost_.)

Anyway, even if Éanna didn't really care about people insulting him, he _had_ started to gravitate toward her a bit when he didn't have anywhere else to be. Which was fine, she had equally few fucks to give about people calling her some sort of brown-noser for associating with a professor outside of class as he did about people in general, and it was _super_ obvious any time he wasn't talking about Potions that he was just a shy, awkward teenage boy, in that sheltered kid who never spent much time with other kids way. More like Harry or Neville Longbottom than Ron or Justin, for example. (Or Tom.)

She didn't see how everyone else had such a problem with him being...well, the _kindest_ way she'd heard it put was _a total social incompetent_. It wasn't like they were all sterling examples of social competency themselves. Maybe it was just the fact that she couldn't help seeing everyone's behaviour through Tom's eyes anymore, a little, but she preferred the honesty of Éanna not giving a fuck what people thought of him, rather than practically everyone else putting on some show of what they thought they _should_ act like. Especially since, _most_ of the time, they weren't very consistent about it.

She didn't spend much time with her yearmates if she could help it, but even the fourth-years she hung out with more, the only ones who never really broke character in public were Theo, Zabini, and Greengrass. Hermione couldn't seem to decide if she wanted to be normal or like Black (or Tom, though obviously that wasn't conscious on Maïa's part, just a convenient way to think of her occasionally being kind of scarily intense and potentially Dark Lady-ish); Black fairly frequently decided that pretending not to be _tiny Bellatrix Lestrange_ was too much of a pain, she couldn't be arsed; Justin was just a _little_ too conscious of how other people would look at him if he said even one slightly impolitic thing; and Harry's approach to dealing with everything from his being famous, to being a parselmouth, to being _dead_, to being the subject of some fucking _prophecy_ about killing the Dark Lord, and now to being the Fourth Triwizard Champion, was to pretend (badly) that he wasn't bothered, either by public opinion _or_ whatever ridiculous turn-up in his life everyone was talking about now, and occasionally explode when he couldn't keep his frustration to himself any longer. (Not that _everyone_ knew about the prophecy, but it still fit the bill.)

Lord Black, she guessed, was pretty good. It was always _very_ obvious when he was trying to be especially socially acceptable, but overdone in such a way it was almost sarcastic, if you actually knew him, which was perfectly in-character for the rest of his personality, too. Actually made him seem much more genuine than the Slytherins, even if the difference between Lord Black and _seriously, kid, you can call me Sirius_ Black (which she _tried_ to do, at least to his face, it was just hard to think of a teacher by his first name) was much more obvious than the difference between quiet, sardonic Theo-around-_people_, and quiet, thoughtful Theo-in-private. His actually showing some degree of concern for a weird little Ravenclaw he'd known for all of two months was kind of odd, though, even if it was just the two of them.

So when he'd said that maybe she should go try to talk to Luna, because she...hadn't been well, the past couple of days, she'd taken the suggestion _very_ seriously. Partially because, until he'd pointed it out, she hadn't noticed that she hadn't noticed Luna in class this past week, either. Or meals. Or _anywhere_. Which was _weird_, because Luna's idea of _unobtrusive_ was a bright pink hat with feathers all over it.

Once it was pointed out, it was concerning enough that she'd gone up to Ravenclaw right away. It had only taken her a couple of seconds to get its _sponge_ riddle (what's full of holes, but still holds water), but it had taken _much_ longer to convince Luna to let her into her bedroom (which she hadn't actually _done_). Most of the Ravenclaws shared with a roommate, but Luna was so very _odd_ that her roommate had jumped ship in the middle of first year, much like Gin had last year.

Which meant there was no one around to notice that she'd gotten rid of every extraneous bit of furniture, including the bed frame (her mattress was sitting in the middle of the room, directly on the floor), covered the window, and enchanted every remaining object and surface in the room to give off a soft white light. It was kind of disorienting, really, walking in (once she finally tried the handle and realised it was unlocked, after about ten minutes arguing through the door about whether Luna was _fine, Ginevra, I promise_). There were no shadows anywhere, made everything look oddly _flat_.

Luna, sitting in the middle of her bed surrounded by sheets of glowing paper and even _pencils_ (Who enchanted bloody _pencils_ to glow? And _why_?), looked up as she did, a cross between fear and relief on her face.

"Luna. What are you doing?"

"Drawing. I told you, I'm fine."

"Drawing," Gin repeated, her eyes flicking around the room. "And remodeling, apparently. Why?"

Luna's fear grew more intense. With the utmost seriousness she said, "I'm hiding from the Dark."

"...I guess hiding from the dark explains all the light charms, sure, but... Why?"

"Not the _dark_, the Dark. The evil Dark, the one pretending to be Lyra's cousin."

"Er..." Honestly, Gin didn't think they were _pretending_, really. They were far too similar for it to be a coincidence... "I know Angel's like, _hundreds_ of years old, but they really are related. And why are you hiding from her, anyway?"

Luna turned to look her in the eye, with an expression which was still far too frightened to be a proper glare. "Angelos Black was Lyra's cousin, but Angelos Black is _gone_. And I'm hiding because she knows that I know, and—"

"Have you been potioning yourself again?" Gin interrupted. Because that made no sense at all.

"No! The thing Lyra _thinks_ is her cousin, isn't! It _ate_ her cousin! Look!" She passed one of her sketches to Gin, the faint glow of the charm-stiffened paper making the charcoal image seem even darker and more disturbing than it already was. A shifting, ephemeral creature, all smoke and eyes and hands and _mouths_, a hundred twisted, tortured faces, strange, grotesque amalgamations of human and insect and alien fae, lurking in its depths or pressing outward, trying to escape, mouths open in silent screams, all centred on a small, perfectly innocent-looking image of Angel Black — the face it chose to show to the world, at least if Gin was interpreting the image correctly. "It's the Dark, Ginevra! It's _evil_! It's madness and suffering and deception and pain, and it's _not_ Lyra's cousin! It _ate_ her, and it's going to eat me too, because I know what it is, what it _really_ is, and—"

"Luna...I think you need to go see Madam Pomfrey," Gin said, as firmly as she could, unnerving as Luna was being. "Or Cassie, or Professor Flitwick, or, hell, even _Snape_..."

"_No_, Ginevra! I can't go out there, not with— _She's_ out there!"

"Look, Luna, I _know_ Angel's creepy—" It made Gin's skin crawl to be in the same room as her, even if that room was as big as the Great Hall, "—but I talked to her for a little bit at the feast, you know when they first got here, and I'm _pretty sure_ she's not going to eat anyone." Actually, Gin wasn't entirely certain the Miskatonite needed to eat _at all_. She'd said something to Black that first night about food being a petty, human concern (which was apparently _hilarious_, for some reason — could you have an inside joke with someone you'd never met before?) so... "Besides," she added, over Luna's objections, "you can't just _stay in your bedroom_ _forever_. How are you getting _food_?" Anyone, practically, could make a vanishing toilet, and cleaning charms weren't great for your hair, but they'd stop you getting to smell too bad, even cooped up in one little room indefinitely. You could maybe even use _aguamenti_ to condense enough water out of the air to avoid dying of thirst, but food was a problem.

"Light doesn't stop elves, just shadows."

So, the house elves were making sure she didn't starve? She guessed that was _something_, but... "Er..."

"She can't see me if there's no shadows to watch from, she can't get in, and—"

"Your door wasn't even locked, you know that, right?" Honestly, Gin had expected it to be, too. She'd just stood outside like an idiot for _minutes_ before actually thinking to check.

"Evil doesn't need _doors_, Ginevra, no more than Lyra Bellatrix does."

"Yeah, okay, but I'm pretty sure it can _use_ doors, so—"

Luna inhaled sharply. "You're right. I need to get rid of the door."

"_No_, you _need to get out of the castle_!"

"But...but... I _can't_," Luna protested, in a _very_ small voice.

Maybe she could convince Cassie or Professor Flitwick to come up _here_... Except it was Sunday, she thought Cassie was out in the Forest somewhere with Black, and she had even _less_ idea where Flitwick would be. Also, she recalled, realising the day... _Fuck_, what time was it? She was going to be late for her lesson with Lord Black!

Oh, fuck it, he'd understand. And there was a solid chance he wasn't even awake yet, anyway. It _was_ Sunday, and barely half-past twelve.

Lord Black was very, _very_ good at battlemagic. Probably not as good as Cassie, but they were both so much better than everyone else Gin had ever seen fight, she kind of figured most people wouldn't see much difference, comparing either of them to themselves, unless they were Aurors or international dueling champions like Flitwick. Lord Black said the difference between him and Cassie, compared to most people she'd seen fighting at the World Cup, was kind of the difference between someone who could hold their own in a pub brawl, and someone who'd been trained to _end_ a pub brawl. Except unlike Cassie, Lord Black had been trained by _the fucking Blackheart_ before going into the Aurors, so in his case, it was more like he'd just been trained to kill anyone who tried to kill him before they could finish the job.

Quite a lot of their lessons devolved, at one point or another, into talking about _why_ people did things, and specifically why _they_ — she and Lord Black — did things. He outright admitted that he _liked_ fighting. (Lord Black talking about fighting sounded _eerily_ similar to some of the things Lyra had said about the riot on the train back to school, it was kind of creepy.) Keeping the Death Eaters and rioters from hurting anyone innocent and maybe _sparking off a civil war between the Brits and the Gaels_ (which no one else was talking about, but Lord Black seemed to think was _definitely a thing that could happen_, and that was _terrifying_), yeah, he'd been all for _that_, but he wouldn't necessarily have gone for the throat and _ended it_ the same way Cassie would, if there _weren't_ innocent bystanders caught in the middle of it.

Theo, who went over to Ancient House all the time because Lyra had given him free access to their library, but tended to get dragged into their lessons kind of a lot, said the Blacks had a reputation for _playing_ with people in life-or-death situations. Lord Black didn't deny it, either. Kind of the opposite, actually — just gave them a wolfish grin and asked whether Gin had really thought they _weren't_ all bloody mad. (Which, no, she hadn't.)

Also unlike Cassie, Lord Black used both light _and_ dark magic. He'd gritted his teeth and tried casting a couple dark curses for comparison, one of the days Theo _hadn't_ been around to be dragged in to do it. He'd been _shocked_ to realise that casting dark magic didn't hurt him like it had when he was dedicated to the Dark, that it was just more difficult than casting an equivalent light curse. (And it wasn't like Lord Black didn't have the channelling capacity to just power through the extra resistance if he wanted to, so.)

Of course Gin had had to ask about that — why would dark magic hurt someone who was dedicated to the Dark? — completely derailing the lesson. Instead, they'd gotten into a long talk about magical polarisation and what it actually _meant_ to be a light or dark mage, and why Lord Black had chosen to dedicate himself to the Light and become a blood traitor when he was just a couple years older than Gin was, now. (It was...not a happy story. But if all the Blacks' childhoods were as fucked up as Lord Black's, it did kind of go a long way toward explaining _why_, exactly, they were all so fucked in the head. His mum made _hers_ sound positively _reasonable_.)

He was definitely qualified to teach her, just...kind of insane, and maybe a little too honest about being raised Dark, and how that had affected him. Which...might actually be a good thing? Was it weird that the fact that Lord Black so _very obviously_ had his own issues made her more willing to be honest with herself about...everything that had happened with Tom, and the fact that she might not really be a _good person_ herself?

But the fact that he was a really good teacher aside (and he _was_, she'd already learned a _lot_ about what it meant to be a warrior for the Light, which was kind of scary, but in a good way), Lord Black was kind of...borderline incompetent, as a responsible adult. He stayed up all night and liked to sleep until at _least_ noon and it wasn't at _all_ unusual for him to be obviously hung-over when she showed up for lessons. Or occasionally still in bed. She'd stood around awkwardly for about half an hour the first time before she'd given up and gone to hang out with Theo in the library. Lord Black had shown up about an hour after _that_, looking _awfully_ rough and full of apologies, told her if it happened again she could hex him awake however she liked, he totally deserved it. Which she _had_, because he'd said he would _teach her_, damn it!

Granted, she'd been _horribly embarrassed_ — what kind of grown-up told a thirteen-year-old girl to just come into his room and hex him to wake him up _when he slept in the nude_?! (not that she really felt like a thirteen-year-old girl most of the time, but that wasn't the point) — but she'd done it, and managed to dodge his barely-conscious retaliatory curse, too. (Knowing that a fucking _blasting curse_ was _his _response to a sudden, painful wake-up call was the only reason she'd managed to avoid Lyra taking her head off for waking _her_ up the other day.)

So now he knew better. He'd ordered the elves to wake him up as soon as she floo'd over, instead. And judging by how sleep-tousled and out of it he occasionally looked when he managed to drag himself into the dueling ring, she was sure they'd had to do so more than once.

Which was _ridiculous_, their lessons were always after lunch, he had _plenty_ of time to be up and— _Whatever_.

Point was, he probably wouldn't notice she was late, and if he did, he'd understand. He'd _better_ understand. Dealing with one of your friends going fucking bonkers and hiding from a Miskatonic Researcher (who probably didn't even know she existed) by charming her entire fucking bedroom to _glow_ was a _lot_ more important than getting drunk and partying and shagging strangers until the sun came up, and then oversleeping.

And she _was_ going to deal with it, because friends didn't let friends lose their minds without at least _trying_ to stop it. Which in this case meant finding someone else to deal with it, because she had _no idea_ what she was doing, dealing with this sort of madness. (Tom might be _insane_, but not like, paranoid, _the Dark is in Hogwarts disguised as a Miskatonic Researcher, and it's out to get me_ insane. More like _people who annoy me deserve to die, and if I'm killing them anyway, why not have fun with it_ insane. ...Or possibly _the Dark is in Hogwarts disguised as a Miskatonic Researcher, I should apply to be her apprentice_ insane.)

"Luna, which elf has been bringing you food?"

Luna, apparently rather taken aback by her forcefulness, startled slightly. "Her name is Winky. But, I just told you, Ginevra, I _can't go out_, I—"

She was interrupted by a _pop_ as the elf appeared beside her, her own look of concern nearly as grave as the one Gin could feel on her own face. "Hi there, Winky, is it?"

"Yes, Miss," the elf said, somewhat startled, she thought, to find a second person in Luna's room. "And what should Winky be calling Miss?"

"Gin Weasley. Well met. You've been taking care of Luna?"

"Yes, Miss Gin. Miss Luna is being...unwell."

"Yeah, I've noticed. Thank you, for taking care of her. Can the elves find people out on the grounds, as well as in the school?"

"Of course we can, the wards of Hogwarts shelter them as well."

"What about the Forbidden Forest?"

The elf frowned. "To find a person _outside_ of the wards is more difficult. Who is Miss Gin trying to find?"

"Er, Cassie. Professor Lovegood."

"Oh, yes, Winky knows Professor Cassie, she can be finding her now, inside or outside of wards."

"Oh, _good_. Then, may I ask a favour?" she asked cautiously. The Hogwarts elves weren't under orders to obey the students, and when that one elf, Rose, had come up to their room to talk the Castle into giving them a bloody _balcony_, she'd made it _very_ clear that she was _not_ under any obligation to do just any favour Lyra (or any of them) asked of her. So, better more polite than necessary than not polite enough, Gin figured.

"Of course Missy may ask."

"Could you please find Cassie and bring her here?"

Winky beamed at her. "Yes, Miss Gin, Winky will do it now."

She popped out of the room before Gin could warn her to be careful, in case Cassie and Lyra were in the middle of a fight or something, ignoring Luna's protests that she didn't want to endanger _Cassie_ by drawing the Dark's attention to _her_ as well. Which was bloody hilarious, really. If Angel Black really _was_ some evil demonic god thing, she'd probably already heard about Cassie, and her hobby of hunting down and killing evil people. Plus, "I think Cassie can take care of herself. A lot better than either of us, anyway."

"_Not against this_!" Gin didn't think she'd ever heard Luna sound so...hysterical. Even right after her mum died. Maybe when Black _poisoned_ her with that babbling potion, but... "Ginevra, you don't _understand_, it's going to— Why couldn't you just leave me alone?!"

_Because, Luna, that's _exactly _what I would've said if someone had tried to take Tom's diary away from me, before I knew what it was, what it was doing to me. If anyone had suggested that I was unwell, that I needed help, if anyone had _seen_, I would've said the exact same as you. I _did_, actually _— I'm fine, Percy, just tired, still getting used to school and everything... — _I would have fought tooth and nail against their help, but that doesn't change the fact that I needed it. I can't _not _help you, when I see you needing it, now..._

"Because you can't just hide in your room _all year_, Luna! Someone will notice, eventually, and drag you out to talk to Pomfrey, or something. You need help!"

"_No!_ Anyone who tries to _help_ is just going to– to get dragged down with me! It knows that I know, and it will know that _they_ know, that _you_ do, and—"

The elf reappeared with a pop, her hand holding that of a very naked, blue-speckled Cassie (apparently she _had_ been hunting spiders), cutting off Luna's hysterical tirade. "Luna? Luna, love, what's wrong?" she asked, even as Winky bowed and silently excused herself.

"It's— I—" Luna stuttered apparently having trouble forming words. "I can't lie to you, I _won't_, but I'm not telling you! If you know, it will _come_ for you, and—"

"Angel Black," Gin interrupted, passing the drawing to Cassie. "Luna thinks she's evil and possessed, and going to eat her, or something, because she _knows_ that Luna knows she's evil and possessed."

"_Ginevra! Why would you do that?!_ You're a _terrible_ friend, how _could_ you– you—"

"Luna, love, calm down," Cassie said, drawing her niece over to sit on the mattress with her, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "I know you're scared, but you shouldn't be angry with Gin, she was right to tell me." _Thank you!_ "I already knew about Angelos, but—"

"You _knew?!_"

"Yes, love. I know what she is. But I didn't know that you were so upset... Did she do something to you, or say something?"

Luna shook her head, burying her face in her aunt's shoulder. "No, I just saw it and I _knew_. It's _evil_ and _everywhere_, and it's _not_ Angelos Black, I tried to tell Ginevra, but she didn't believe me— It _ate_ her, Angelos. She's not there, it's just...just _pretending_ to be her! It's _horrible_!"

"I know, Luna," Cassie said, still with that same soothing tone. "I know."

Wait, what? Luna was actually _right_ about that? Gin had kind of thought she'd lost the plot, there.

"You _don't_ know, if you knew, you'd try to do something about it, and it would _kill you_!"

"I wouldn't, actually," Angel said, smirking at them from the doorway, doing whatever she did to stop her magic from overwhelming them, but all the little hairs on the back of Gin's neck stood up anyway. Even when she wasn't trying to be _obviously terrifying_, like when she and Selwyn had made their entrance, Black's "sister" was still really fucking scary. Like, visiting Charlie and having a dragon swoop down on you out of nowhere, an instinctive, _this thing could kill you without blinking_ scary. Luna made a frightened little _eep_ sound. "And I doubt she would, either. I'm being a diplomat at the moment, remember? And sadly no one else seems to think starting a war between the C.I.S. and the University would be much fun at all, so. For a little soothsayer, you're jumping to an awful lot of conclusions, on _very_ little information."

Cassie glared at the intruder, light magic burning hot on the air, pushing back the tide of fear. "Angelos, you're scaring my niece. You're not welcome here."

"No shit? All the light charms did kind of give it away, you know. But Persephone has this _thing_ about enforcing vows sworn on the Styx, and I don't like dying. Even if I don't _stay_ dead, it's boring, and kind of hurts. A lot. And I promised— Well, Sarah made me promise a _lot_ of things before agreeing I could come here, but the important one is, I'm not supposed to cause any deaths while I'm here. And while _I_ would argue that it's not _my_ fault your niece is a nosey Parker, if I let her spiral into paranoid madness and eventual suicide, Alethia will _probably_ convince Persephone that it counts. Especially now that I actually know about it."

That was...disturbing. Probably not as disturbing as it _should_ be, she'd been spending too much time around Lyra. Or as disturbing as the look Angel gave her when she asked, "...How _did_ you know?"

It wasn't really a..._negative_ look, just...very intense. _Fascinated_. "Gelach may have kept Alethia's little pet sheltered enough to harbour little darkness in _her_ soul, but _you_, Ginevra... I've been watching _you_."

Gin swallowed hard. "Why?"

The _look_ only grew more disturbing as the evil witch — the Dark, whatever — grinned at her, showing altogether too many teeth. "You stole one of my marshmallows." What? "And then you choked on it, and for a while I thought maybe the marshmallow would win, and I'd get a _whole new bag_ of marshmallows-—

"Marshmallows? What the hell are you talking about?" Gin snapped. She might not know anything about high ritual, but even _she_ knew that gods thinking you'd stolen something from them was _not_ the sort of thing you wanted to be _unclear_ about! Especially when you were pretty fucking sure you _hadn't_.

"Okay, you're right, I over-extended the metaphor. Tom. He was mine. Granted, you didn't really take a piece of _him_, just a copy, but _he_ was mine long before he made that copy, so it was mine, too. Do you not remember meeting me at Yule? I mean, I wouldn't have looked like _this_, but—"

A jolt of ice ran down Gin's spine.

No, she _hadn't_ looked like that. She — the Dark, the power Tom had invited to join him in celebrating the solstice, even more horrifying and overwhelming than he was — hadn't looked like _anything_. It was just the urge to kill, to defile. To ruin something innocent for her own — _his_ own — selfish pleasure.

The attacks she'd made on the students of Hogwarts weren't _nearly_ the worst thing she'd done under Tom's control. He'd made her watch as he snuck out to the village, lured a child away with her smile, her laugh, like something out of a dark fae tale. He tortured the boy with her hands, then healed him and stole the memories from his mind, leaving a bone-deep fear of the night, of the _dark_, with no idea _why_...

And he'd presented _her_ horror, the rape of _her_ innocence which was forcing her to watch, to feel skin parting under the blade of her knife, to the Dark. As a gift. A horrible, _horrible_ gift. A gift she hadn't remembered herself until she was sorting through his memories over the summer — he'd taken _her_ version of it, leaving behind self-loathing and disgust and horror, but no idea _why_...

"Oh, you _do_, don't you." The evil creature smirked. "I don't begrudge you the marshmallow, honestly. For a while, even after little Harry ripped it to pieces, I thought it might manage to twist you around to serve me, anyway. I'm sure you can imagine my disappointment to realise that you've decided to take all that you stole from _him_ and turn it against me, protecting where you could destroy, doing your best to _help_ where it would be so, _so_ easy to cause harm and suffering." She clicked her tongue and shook her head like _shame on you_, but that smirk was still firmly in place. "But he didn't sacrifice your future, only your innocence, and if no one ever fought back against the tide, life would be too boring for words, so." She shrugged. "You still have my attention, though."

She had Gin's attention, too. She couldn't seem to look away, trying not to remember Tom's delight with his clever little work of "art", the sick, twisted adoration he held for the Dark; his reveling in Gin's pain, her suffering, her _helplessness_, as much as that of the boy he'd forced her to torture — _no! forced me to _watch_, I didn't do it!_ — trying to not remember the disgusting _thrill_ he got out of it, and the pleasure — the sense of _belonging_ — it had brought him, to win the approval of this– this—

_NO!_

She _ripped_ her attention away from the memories, forcing herself to blink, to look at Luna, staring at her with terrified, too-wide eyes, forcing herself to remember that this _isn't about me!_

"I'm sure you can imagine my delight," she said drily, her best imitation of Tom standing up to, well, _anyone_ who had any degree of power over him, all sarcastic and unimpressed, even if her words were completely inoffensive. (Her voice only shook a little bit.) The Dark — Angel, it was easier to think of her as Angel — probably knew exactly what she was doing. She (_it_) giggled at her. Creepily. She did her level best to ignore it. _Focus, Weasley_. This is about _Luna_! "But now that you know, you'll stop doing whatever you're doing to Luna, right? Because I don't know anything about high ritual, but even I know that no one crosses Death, and you said you swore on the Styx..."

"I did, yes. Unfortunately, I'm not actually _doing_ anything. This is just what happens when mortals look on the true face of something like me."

"I don't believe you! You always _lie_, you _are_ a lie!" Luna protested. Gin was a little surprised, but even with how little time they'd spent together lately, she was still aware that the little blonde had kind of gotten obsessed with people lying around her lately.

"I _deceive_, little moon-child. I don't _always_ lie. If I did, you'd know I was lying, wouldn't you."

Luna was practically shaking in her aunt's arms, but she still glared bravely at the evil witch. "You _are_ always lying! You aren't Angel Black, you _ate_ her, you're just _in _her, like– like a puppet!"

"That's who Angel Black _is_, silly girl." Wait, _what?!_ She wasn't _denying_ it? "An _Avatar of the Dark_. It's not a secret. And I don't know why you think I'm not her. She gave herself to me. She's part of me. Mine, _forever_. What is hers is mine, including this body, this life, because her consciousness is one with mine. I never said I was _only_ the mortal, human Angelos Melini. It's not my fault even those of you who can perceive all of what I am can't comprehend it. Doesn't mean I have it out for you."

"You're _not helping_, Angelos," Cassie snapped at her. "How do we fix this?"

"_We_ don't. A certain annoying little twit made it impossible for your precious niece to lie to herself, and, well, _I_ think the truth is pretty, in a stark, razor blade made out of ice sort of way, but it's not _kind_ or _soft_, and _definitely_ not inherently _light_. Why do you think wisdom is associated with experience rather than ignorance? If you just reach out and _grab_ it, it will cut you. Sure you'll know better next time, but that doesn't mean it doesn't _hurt_, and it's going to leave a mark.

"Even if Sarah — or Albus's little _paramenon_, I suppose you might trust him better — breaks little Luna here out of this particular paranoid spiral and makes her forget or overlook me, returns her to a state of blissful ignorance, this is just going to happen again the next time she runs into someone or something bigger than its incarnation here and now. All _I_ can do is tell you what's happening, and swear on the Styx that I have no intention to hurt her. _She_ has to come to terms with the fact that I exist, that selfishness and destruction and the ability to cause pain in others, intentionally or otherwise, are a part of human nature. You can't do it for her. Good job, by the way," she said, casting a smirk over her shoulder at someone standing in the corridor. "There aren't many things that will hurt a child who's been keeping herself deliberately innocent more deeply than forcing her to see the world as it is."

"Um, thanks? I guess? She wasn't _really_ innocent before, either, though. And I wasn't _trying_ to hurt her. Gelach's just a creepy bitch." Black came to lean beside her "sister" in the doorway, though like the older witch, she avoided actually coming into the overly-lit room. She had obviously been out in the Forest with Cassie, but she'd gone to the trouble of cleaning herself up a bit, getting dressed and washing (most of) the blood off her face. "So, are we having a party up here, or what? And what the hell is with the light charms, Luna? If you really don't want me to walk in here, you could've just _said_ so."

"Not everything is about _you_, Lyra Bellatrix," Luna snapped.

Angel smirked. "Yes, she's hiding from _me_, Little Sister, not you. And no, actually, I think we're almost done, here."

Black pouted at her. "What did I miss? Why is Luna hiding from you?"

"You missed a spot here," she said, reaching out to wipe a stray drop of blue off Black's cheek, and licked it from her finger before adding with a grin, "And apparently I'm scary."

"Really? I hadn't noticed," Black lied, far too amused.

"Liar."

Black rolled her eyes at Luna's almost-inaudible comment. "Fine, I _have_ noticed, but I don't get why you're acting so silly over it. From where I'm standing, you're being ridiculous. Unless I've _really_ missed something, Angel hasn't _done_ anything to you, or Maïa, or Harry, or anyone else who gets all jumpy when she walks into the room. Well, maybe Sirius, but that's just House business."

"She's _not Angelos_, Lyra! She's _the Dark_! She's _evil_, she wants to hurt us, all of us—"

"Well, yeah? Obviously? That doesn't mean she's _going_ to, though."

"You don't _understand!_ Show her, please, the— That's what I see when I look at _her_!" she said, even as Cassie held out the sketch. She apparently wasn't willing to stand up and leave Luna, so Black actually had to come into the room to take it, making a face at the steady, even glow surrounding her.

"This much light _can't_ be good for you," she muttered, examining the drawing. Then she blinked at Luna, Cassie, and Gin before turning to the embodiment of evil itself. "Do normal people _not_ see the Dark in you?"

The Dark giggled. "No, of course not."

"Well, that's fucking _weird_. But yeah, Luna, I know what Angel is. But you can't _possibly_ think that she's a danger _to you_ just because she _is dangerous_. I mean, you're not scared of _me_. Um...are you? I mean, I guess I've never really asked, but...?"

"_You_ don't want to hurt me! She does! I can _feel_ it!"

"Well, I don't want to hurt _you personally_, and I...don't _think_ Angel does either?" The Dark gave her an impassive shrug. "Whatever. Even if she does _want_ to, that doesn't mean she's going to. I mean, I don't go around starting battles to the death with people for fun."

Her "sister" giggled again. "Really? You _were_ out playing with the Huntress, weren't you?" she asked, head tilting toward the blood-splattered professor.

"Yeah, that elf just popped in and said Luna needed her, then popped away with her. Rude. But acromantulae don't count, apparently."

"Since when?"

Black shrugged. "Since they're giant spiders and humans are kind of ridiculously species-ist when it comes to non-anthropoid beings?"

Angelos just smirked at her, raising an eyebrow like, _really?_

"Shut up, you're ruining my argument."

"Doesn't matter, I already swore I don't have any intention of hurting the little truth-teller, so—"

"You didn't, actually," Cassie pointed out. "You said you _could_ swear it. That's not the same thing."

_Ooh, good catch!_ Gin hadn't noticed, and that was the sort of thing that got people killed horribly in stories about the fae. Not that shite in faerie stories was exactly applicable to real life, most of the time, but when you were trying to keep the _Dark Itself_ from fucking _eating you_, they were probably as good a guide as anything.

Angel rolled her eyes. "Well, I _have_ sworn it to Sarah."

"Then it shouldn't be any imposition to swear it to _me_ as well." There was enough iron in Cassie's tone, if the dark witch really _was_ fae, Gin thought she would've flinched.

As it was, she just smirked. "I'm not telling you everything I swore to Sarah. But I will swear not to kill or harm or deliberately cause emotional distress to, or even manipulate little Luna Xenadora with malicious intent, including by causing harm or death or emotional distress to those she cares for in order to cause injury to her. I will hold to this promise for a year and a day, beginning at today's sunrise, and further promise not to retaliate against either of you for extracting this vow after that period has ended, that I will abide by its spirit rather than the letter of it, and make no attempt to circumvent it." That was..._really_ comprehensive. The vow of someone who had to make a _lot_ of vows, to a lot of very paranoid people, Gin was betting. "And in exchange, _you_ will acknowledge that I've done everything in my power to assure Luna I have no intention of harming her, which is all I can do to prevent her succumbing to her paranoia about me."

Cassie's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "_Is_ it all you can do?"

"I don't _fix_ people, Lovegood. Surely Artemis has told you as much." Wait, _Artemis_?! Was _Cassie fucking Lovegood_ a _white mage_?! "I _could_ place her under a geas _not_ to kill herself, but that would _probably_ be counterproductive and cause her more pain in the long run than killing her _right now_, and do you _know_ how hard it is to drive someone insane in _just_ the right way to compensate for their own inherent instabilities and let them act relatively _normal_? And even if you get it right, it's not exactly a painless process for the subject. Ask Mirabella Zabini, if you don't believe me."

"Wait, what about Zee?"

The Miskatonite scowled. "A bunch of paternalistic arses broke her legs, then forced her to dance on them anyway until she learned to fly and fake it for the crowd." In response to Black's obvious confusion, she added, "Ask her why she hates mind-healers sometime, and how people deal with dark children _outside _of the House of Black. Do we have an accord, Lovegood?"

"Yes, fine," Cassie agreed, though she still looked _awfully_ suspicious. More so, now that _the embodiment of evil itself_ had just implied that she held some sympathy for children whose minds got fucked with by healers. (Even if they were probably children like _Tom_, which Gin didn't think should count.)

Black clearly had no idea what would have happened to her if she'd been born into a _sane_ family. From what Lord Black had told her, the Blacks used a combination of brainwashing and torture to force their kids to conform to the standards of the House, but Gin had looked into it, what mind-healers actually _did_ (back when Mum suggested that maybe she ought to talk to one right after, well, _everything_, at the end of first year), and she thought that might be worse.

Gin didn't know what Lady Zabini's deal was, but given that she was the kind of person who was still friends with _Bellatrix Lestrange_ at the _end _of the war, and that was _after_ a childhood intervention, it wasn't at _all_ out of the question that someone had decided she was a hopeless case and just _compelled_ her to follow the rules. (Because it wasn't like _forcing someone to act normal_ wouldn't build _massive_ amounts of resentment, or anything.) If Black — or, well, say Bellatrix, because Gin _still_ didn't know who'd raised Black — had been born a Weasley instead of a Black, that was probably what would've happened to her. Granted, that sort of thing was...less common now than it was fifty or even thirty years ago (supposedly), but even the idea that something like that _could_ be done was enough to make Gin wary of talking to them at all. Who _knew_ what they'd do to someone who had _Tom Riddle's memories_ floating around her fucked up head? (She fucking _hated_ legilimency.)

"Then it is so sworn, by my soul, on the Styx, with Death and Magic as witnesses."

"And so acknowledged. Now, if you don't mind, I'd like to talk to my niece in private."

"You say, as though I _wasn't_ in the middle of something when you started talking about me in front of Ginevra," the Dark said sarcastically. "Luna, love? Evil is a matter of perspective. Do yourself a favour and ditch the absolutist approach to morality. It'll save you a _lot_ of pain in the long run."

She vanished before Luna could do more than give her a startled, still-terrified blink. "Why would she say that?" she asked, sounding _terribly_ uncertain.

"Er...it's true?" Black suggested, obviously trying not to laugh.

"But why would she say something to...help me?"

"The most evil people aren't _consistently_ evil, Luna." Tom certainly wasn't. "That would be too _predictable_. If you _know _they're _always_ out to hurt you, they can give you good advice and _know_ you're not going to take it, tell you the truth and you think it's a lie. They think it's _funny_." Like they thought _torturing children_ was _art_... Gin swallowed hard, pushing the memories away again.

"It _is_ funny, Red. And if she's being nice with no intent to actually hurt you, but you twist yourself up overthinking it, well, that's not _her_ fault, is it."

"Piss off, Lyra, you're not helping."

Black shrugged. "I think that's a matter of opinion. I mean, Angel wasn't _wrong,_ evil _is_ a matter of perspective, so—"

Cassie's eyes tipped toward the ceiling. Gin fancied she was working very hard not to shout at Black. "Gin, thank you for sending that elf for me. Would you mind...?"

She nodded. "On it. Come on, Black."

It really was easy to forget how _tiny_ Black was. Grabbing her elbow and jerking her off balance, it was much easier to get her to start moving toward the door than Gin would've guessed. Of course, it helped that Lord Black had given her a few pointers on grappling, just in case she was ever disarmed and physically assaulted. (And also because physical fitness was important, and tumbling and grappling were more fun than running in circles for an hour or so — though she did still go running in the morning, anyway. It helped her wake up, and there wasn't really space to practice tumbling in their room.) Gin would be shocked if Black didn't know more than she did about that sort of thing — Harry had mentioned she and Lord Black had gotten into a brawl with a bunch of muggle hoodlums over the summer, totally kicked arse with no magic at all — but she probably wasn't expecting it, and Gin knew enough to figure out exactly which direction to yank to break her casual, not-expecting-a-fight stance.

"Hey!"

"I'm late for my lesson with Lord Black. You're coming with me," she said, dragging the insensitive little madwoman out of the room.

Black laughed. "Oh, I am, am I?"

Yes, she was, because keeping an eye on her was the only way to make sure she wouldn't just go back to bug Luna and Cassie as soon as Gin left. Plus, if Black was there they'd be _much_ less likely to end up talking about the _first _time Gin met the Dark, which was good, because she really, _really_ didn't want to think about that. Yes, they might end up talking about _Bellatrix_ — Lord Black was convinced that Black and the Blackheart were practically the same person, so she tended to come up when they were in the same room, and especially when they were talking about fighting, because, come on — but she wasn't _nearly_ as terrifying as Tom. The worst _she'd_ ever done was torture people to death. _Tom_ had made _Gin_ attack all those people, torture that boy, and then _keep living_. _And_ turned Bellatrix into his mind-slave when she was a little kid, so at least _some_ of the horrible things Bellatrix had done were his fault, too.

"What, did you have other plans?" she asked. Surely she wasn't planning on going back out to the Forest, the spiders would already have retreated into their own territory, and she had probably been planning on hunting them for at _least_ a couple more hours before Winky had grabbed Cassie.

Black shrugged. "No, not really." She started skipping along beside Gin, probably just to make it annoying to keep hold of her arm, because she stopped as soon as she let go. "So, what've you been working on, lately? He's not still making you practice variations on the stunning charm, is he?"

Gin smirked to herself. _Too easy_.

* * *

_So, in case anyone has been wondering, yes, Angel's presence **does** make it more obvious to everyone around her that Lyra is actually insane and arguably evil, rather than just kind of eccentric and entertainingly sociopathic. Not enough (yet) to make any real impact on the way they're acting around her, but it **has** only been a week._

_Also, I'm not sure if we've clarified this in-story at any point (I'm leaning toward no? Perenelle might've said something at some point...) but Angel's primary motivation, much like Lyra's, is to entertain herself. The hold Sarah has over her is not unlike Hermione's influence on Lyra — she's entertaining, so Angel wants her to want to stick around. Which means she's in a position to get Angel to swear to restrain herself to petty mischief while they're in Britain, by a Power **much** more powerful than the Dark. (Angel might be able to break reality and summon eldritch abominations to destroy large swaths of New England, but she can't really wipe Britain off the map by herself.) There's **always** a bigger fish out there._

_(Unless you're Death.)_

_Angel's Dark has only been "personified" as long as the Blacks have been dedicated to it. They did have some idea what they were dedicating themselves **to** (ie, the very spirit of the chaos, madness, and destruction they wished to unleash on the enemies who had destroyed their House), but it wasn't a strictly defined deity before they formed the Covenant with it, and it's changed quite a lot over the centuries, as the Blacks' understanding of it has shifted. It's a comparatively young Aspect, for all its area of influence is incredibly broad. Both Flamel and Sarah are older than it, and no matter how dangerous it might be, they can't help thinking of it as mostly being annoying as hell, following them around like a bored little cousin or something and making trouble for the lulz. And a few beings like Death and the Morrigan are just as threatening to Angel as they are to anyone else._

_(There's always a bigger fish, and all that. —Lysandra)_

_Also, Gin and Sirius are really very good for each other. Consider Sev **very** smug about this._

_— Leigha_


	37. It's been a whole week!

Arte ducked her head against the wind, wrapping her arms tight around herself. "_Fuck_, why is it so cold, it's not even winter yet!"

Shrugging, Gabbie looked up at the dark, cloudy sky. It was after sunset...maybe, she thought? She hadn't seen the sun all day, but it was nearly six, so. Point was, sure, might get cold all the way up here at night, not really surprised. It was only November, but they were also way up north — more than she'd _thought_ it would be, maps are _stupid_ — so it wasn't that weird, was it? "I guess it is kind of cold, I barely even noticed."

"Yes, well, you're a veela, aren't you?" Pulling out her wand, Arte drew a few little circles in the air, muttering under her breath. The spell caught with a flare of light magic, and Arte immediately relaxed, the tension falling out of her shoulders. "And the first task is going to be _outside_. What the hell were they thinking? I'm going to have to get my mountain gear sent up..."

"Um, I thought it was just going to be a big fight or something, what do— Oh, right, never mind." Sometimes, Arte's family would all go up a mountain somewhere and stay there for a bit...for some reason? Gabbie assumed it was a religious thing of some kind, by how awkwardly Arte brushed it off when she'd asked about it, she didn't know anything about it. But, she didn't mean _rock-climbing_ stuff, just the clothes, which would be enchanted for warmth. Right. "You know, if some of your family want to stay here, like your parents and stuff, at least around the actual tasks, you could probably ask Harry to ask his godfather if they can stay with him."

Arte gave her a sideways glance, her head going shadowed and shifty. (Arte's magic was pretty, all soft and warm and shiny, like a sunny spring day, moments like this like a cloud was passing in front of the sun for a bit.) "Isn't Potter's godfather Sirius Black?"

"Yep! Auntie Lise and Aunt Chloé are staying with him right now, and Mum is finishing up with something she has going on at home, I don't know what, and she'll be staying there too. Apparently he's weird, and a little hyper-active, but nice so far. Izzie says he's funny." Isabèu and Laïa had shown up at Hogwarts not long after the Champions were selected, they'd all be staying in Britain the whole year.

Harry was being all silly and awkward about his cousins he hadn't known he had, which Gabbie guessed sort of made sense, since he wasn't used to having cousins all over the place all the time. (Gabbie sometimes forgot a lot of people _didn't_ grow up with a bunch of cousins.) It probably didn't help that Izzie was all excited about their British vacation, she was being maybe a little too aggressive about getting to know their shiny new cousin. She'd even followed him around to class and stuff a few times, sometimes chatting with his friends who actually spoke French, which Gabbie thought was kind of adorable, but Harry clearly had no idea what to do with her.

But Arte didn't stop giving her an odd look, despite how smart and perfect that idea was. "I'm not certain putting up Cæcinés with the House of a Black is a great idea."

Gabbie blinked. "Is this fancy people old family stuff?" The Cæcinés were one of the older families in all of Europe — like, _older than the Roman Republic_ old — and they were all rich and important and stuff, so there were all these things to do with what kind of relationship Arte's family had with other big important families, stuff going back generations and generations, it was confusing. In the last couple years, Arte had just started ignoring some of it, which she could get away with because...reasons (Arte hadn't actually explained what the hell happened to make everything suddenly change), but just because she wasn't expected to hang out with the annoying prissy rich kids at Beauxbatons anymore, and was allowed to do things like be friends with Gabbie without getting in trouble for not being a proper young lady or whatever, didn't mean she wasn't still a Cæciné, which meant there was stuff she had to pay attention to, which was all too much and weird and stupid Gabbie could never keep track of any of it.

The cloud in Arte's head broke up, amusement bubbling to the surface, putting a skip in Gabbie's step. "Yes, Gabrielle, it's _fancy people old family stuff_. The Blacks are sort of like the Cæcinés of Britain, in a lot of ways, except Dark. Especially the last few centuries — there's this thing called the Covenant that, well, it's supposed to be a secret, but..." Arte shrugged.

Arte didn't actually explain what this supposed-to-be-a-secret thing was, so that meant it kind of _was_ a secret (at least to Gabbie). She also didn't explain quite enough for Gabbie to connect the dots, but she could figure it out from context. "So, I'm guessing them being like Dark Cæcinés is a _bad_ thing, and means you don't get along, because of someone being vaguely rude to someone else like a thousand years ago, so now you all hate each other for no good reason."

Arte's lips twitched into a wry smile. "Something like that. Lord Black might be fine with hosting veela at his home, but my family might make things...complicated. Politically."

"Politics are stupid."

With a bright laugh, Arte admitted, "Yeah, I know. Don't worry about it, Gabbie, I'm sure my parents can find somewhere to stay around the tasks. If they can't arrange something suitable themselves, they can just ask the Longbottoms or the Prewetts or the Smethwycks or something. They'll be fine."

Gabbie wanted to insist they ask Harry — _clearly_ all their family and people should stay at the same place together, that was just _efficient_ — but it wasn't really her business, she guessed, so she dropped it. Arte chuckled some more, so she'd probably caught that, the sneaky cheating mind mage. (She _could_ keep Arte out if she wanted to, of course, she just didn't care.)

"You could try," Arte said, as they walked through the big doors into the stupid-glitzy Entrance Hall. The biting chill on the air vanished the instant they stepped through the threshold, Arte dismissed her warming spell with a flick of her fingers and a crackle of dissolving magic.

"Yes, yes, I know, you're all powerful and scary, I didn't forget." Case in point: wandlessly dispelling elemental magics was _not_ an easy thing to do, that was just showing off. There was a reason the President had picked her to be their second Champion over all the older students who'd come to enter. (It was _supposed_ to be a random draw, but Gabbie suspected Maxime had cheated — it was tradition, after all.) "I thought you were trying to get into the habit of not directly responding to people's thoughts before they say them out loud. Because normal people think it's creepy and stuff."

Arte shrugged. "Gabbie, _most_ people think I'm creepy." Implying there was no point in continuing to try to not do creepy things, because people were going to find her creepy anyway.

"Well, yeah, but that's because you were trying to be a normal proper young lady, pretending to be something you're not can be _really_ exhausting, it was making you all cold and irritable and _grr_." She made little claws with her hands which...wasn't _quite_ right, that made it sound way more aggressive than the distant, smooth, sophisticated façade Arte had been aiming for, and while she could be pretty snappish, she'd never been as bad as a lot of the other rich important people from fancy old families...and it'd usually only been when Gabbie was being _especially_ annoying...

"People think I'm even weirder when I'm _not_ pretending, that was the whole point."

"I don't think you're weird."

"Exactly. You're a moon-kissed veela, and _you_ don't think I'm weird — have you ever met a normal person ever who _doesn't_ think _you're_ weird?"

...Good point.

Arte laughed at her again. _Mean_.

The Great Hall, the one with its awesome sky-ceiling thing (which was just showing the boring bland clouds today, boo), was already mostly full when she and Arte got there. Not a surprise, they'd been practising transfiguration — well, Arte had been helping Gabbie with her transfiguration, she was, like, three years ahead of Gabbie and much better at it — and they'd gotten distracted, they were a bit late. Arte led them off to a seat in the middle table, not where most of the Beauxbatonnais were clumped together but between some of the Durmstrangers and some of the British muggles. Some people weren't very happy with Arte being their second Champion, she'd been avoiding most of the older students for days now.

Arte greeted the Durmstrangers in Nordic and the muggles in English, because of course she did. Thankfully, the conversation going on around them was mostly in French — rather laboured French in some cases, but French. Gabbie's English was still barely passable, and she knew enough Nordic (specifically Vestlandsk, they'd gone there on holiday once) to tell if someone was threatening her or hitting on her, that was about it. Also, like, basic travel stuff, like what's your name and which way to the bathroom and sorry I didn't mean to I'm a veela these things just happen and I'll have the fish please, that didn't count.

Of course, the British muggle next to Gabbie — Christopher, his name was, a somewhat severe-looking man in his...forties, maybe — his French was _very_ laboured, Arte (and Gabbie) still slipped in an English word now and again when he wasn't getting something. When she and Arte had turned up, the muggles and the Durmstrangers had apparently been talking about, like, politics and government and stuff. Which had probably been very confusing for them, even without the language barrier, because the Danes had a really _weird_ system of government compared to most other people, and would seem even _more_ foreign to muggles. It was..._sort of_ like how the People did things, though without the big national government they had over in Media, just all the little clans and syndicates on their own. Which was _weird_, but she could sort of get it.

Arte, being from a family of fancy people who knew lots of fancy people, had a lot to say about how the government back home worked, which was a lot more similar to what the muggles were used to. (Though, without a queen or anything, obviously.) And they were going off on that for a while, which Gabbie didn't have a lot to say about, so she mostly focused on her food. At least, until the enclaves the People had dotted here and there came up, so then Gabbie _did_ have to talk about that, because while Arte knew how these things worked from the Aquitanian end she was less familiar with the Empire. Not that Gabbie really paid that much attention to politics herself, but Papa _did_, and he complained about things enough she'd picked up a little, and there were Delacours in the local syndicate, obviously...

As fun as meeting new people from other countries was, this conversation was _boring_.

Letting her eyes randomly wander around the room, Gabbie spotted familiar silver hair at one of the tables at the far side of the room, one of the student houses — Slytherin, the green everywhere meant Slytherin. Yup, that was Izzie — she was the only one of Aunt Chloé's half-veela kids who'd gotten her hair, the other three had gotten Auntie Lise's — apparently she'd decided to follow Harry to the Slytherin table with his Blaise for dinner today. Though, Izzie wasn't actually talking to Harry, at the moment, instead babbling away with a little blonde girl (brighter than veela hair, sunny yellow), both of them grinning and giggling.

Gabbie didn't recognise her at first glance, but she looked a _lot_ like Blaise's Daphne — they were engaged, apparently, or _going_ to be engaged, the weird dancing around it shite fancy people like to do, which was kind of weird, because while they were _definitely_ friends, like the really close really old kind that had been together forever and probably always would be, but she didn't think Daphne liked Blaise at all, in the sexy way, she meant, which was weird, because she was _pretty sure_ people who were married were expected to have sex. That was sort of, you know, kind of the point? She meant, the People didn't really do marriage, most of the time, but from what she understood it was a whole...family thing? Like, that was the point. And you kinda needed to have sex to have kids. Well, no, you didn't actually, because blood alchemy was a thing, she was just saying. She didn't _entirely_ get what was going on with that, but Harry had said it was a thing and just shrugged and moved on, and Blaise and Daphne _seemed_ happy enough, so...

Whatever. Point was, sunny blonde girl was probably, like, a baby sister or cousin or something. Daphne sitting nearby looking exasperated — very similar to Fleur's _my baby sister is being embarrassing near me but I can't do anything about it_ face, which was kind of funny — so that seemed like a good bet. Okay, then. They also must be talking in French, because Harry had on his _very intense because I'm doing mind magic to understand a language I don't speak_ thing — Harry was actually _very_ good at that, which was weird, because, Harry was really good at mind magic in general, but he didn't seem to realise he was? Like, multiple times, he'd dropped comments about Blaise being the better legilimens, which, he was more _experienced_, certainly, but even just from how they projected images at Gabbie and from observing them interpreting foreign languages and stuff, she had the feeling Harry actually had better intuitive talent for it. In fact, Gabbie suspected there were a couple times Harry _hadn't even noticed_ she wasn't speaking English...

Of course, Harry _also_ seemed to think he was, just, an average wizard, which...was _very_ silly? Like, he might not be good with the _book_ stuff, and he didn't have the formal training a lot of the people around him did, but they were mostly from fancy old families, so, obviously? He'd mentioned something, at one point, about his patronus being a cat, and, okay, he'd been _thirteen_ when he'd first cast a _corporeal patronus_ — that was the same age _Arte_ had been when she'd first done it, and she was fucking _amazing_ at light magic. Gabbie suspected Harry was actually a very talented wizard, and just...didn't know this...for some reason?

Also, his magic was all fascinating and tingly which, sure, wasn't exactly scientific, but veela tended to have good instincts for these things.

Speaking of tingly...

Gabbie watched Harry and Blaise for a moment — leaning in and muttering to each other, probably over Izzie and maybe-Daphne's-sister being ridiculous, something Blaise said had him smirking and Harry rolling his eyes — biting her lip in thought. A week was probably long enough, right? maybe? True, even after a few years at Beauxbatons, she still wasn't great at figuring out outsider things, and obviously all outsiders weren't exactly the same, so it could be kind of hard to tell what was...like, _normal_ for them, and what was just that individual person being weird, she meant? It didn't help that outsiders seemed to have a whole wide range of ideas about sex and relationships and stuff, which just made it even _more_ confusing. Like, compare Arte and Evi and Laëttie and Eckart, and there were four _completely_ different perspectives right there, and sure, you had a fancy old family person from Lengadòc and a vampire from Greece and a not-quite muggleborn from Auvèrnha and then a normal not-fancy person from Helvetica, so they weren't the _same kind_ of outsider, but still.

Point was, a week of actually knowing each other at all and hanging out had been enough for Evi and Eckart — both had commented that it might not have been, normally, but sexy veela mind magic tended to help skip over a lot of the buildup normal people..._apparently_ often needed, so that wasn't so much of a problem, as long as she wasn't, like, just coming up and molesting practical strangers. But not for Arte and Laëttie, though, but she thought they might actually be kind of weird? In Laëttie's case, she'd been raised mostly muggleborn, and had sort of had weird ideas about them both being girls, that had been her big hang up, because apparently a lot of muggles cared about that. Which was _weird_ — she didn't see why it should matter whether someone was a boy or a girl or whatever, and also, they were _literally different species_, getting hung up on whether it was normal or whatever was just...kind of silly? Like, the core of that argument was that sex was 'supposed' to be reproductive, so there was something inherently problematic about things that couldn't eventually lead to babies somehow...but veela and humans couldn't interbreed, she could have sex all day every day with as many human boys as she wanted and never get pregnant, so... She didn't know, she'd always thought the whole _homosexuality is unnatural_ thing was just inherently silly, which might be because she was a veela and they did things different, but also might just be because it was silly to begin with, she wasn't sure. Laëttie had gotten over it, eventually, so maybe it was just silly, who knows.

(Also, people were _part_ of the natural world, so...if people did gay stuff, didn't that mean it was a natural thing for people to do, like, by definition? Wouldn't there have to be some external force influencing them for it to be inherently against their nature? There wasn't one, not any she could think of, so... She didn't get it.)

Anyway, then there was Arte, who... Well, she didn't actually know what was going on with Arte. They made out quite a bit, and Gabbie knew the shape of her body pretty damn well by now...through her clothes, because that was as far as it went. Which was confusing, because, Gabbie could _feel_ Arte wanted her, it was impossible to hide that from a veela, and a few times she'd literally had to twist around with mind magic to shut herself down to force herself to stop, which was, just, she didn't get it. She'd asked, but Arte just said she was being careful or something, the explanation hadn't explained anything and also hadn't really made any sense, no, she didn't know what was going on with Arte.

Which was fine, Arte was great, just confusing sometimes. But it _did_ mean Arte couldn't (wouldn't) help her sustain herself while they were in Britain.

It wasn't an _emergency_, like, she didn't need to do something about it _right away_, or anything. But, even just thinking about it right now, it was very obvious to her that she was a bit more...scatter-brained than usual. Which could be an early sign she was starting to get tired, though one that was usually subtle enough most other people didn't notice, because she was pretty much all over the place by default, other people couldn't tell if they weren't looking for it. (With the exception of Mum and Fleur and some of her cousins, but they could also tell by the feel of her magic, she thought, so they were cheating.) At least, she was at a point she should start _thinking_ about how she'd be taking care of it, if nothing else.

Normally, the obvious thing to do would be to arrange something with the people she was sharing a room with, but that didn't seem likely. Gin did _not_ like her — for _some_ reason, Gabbie had no idea why — and Maïa was still slightly irritated about Lyra springing Gabbie on them with no warning, and that little misunderstanding the first morning, but she was mostly over that by now, and her mind was so cool and pretty and _sparkly_, so maybe Gabbie would wonder if she should be trying to approach her. But, the problem there, Maïa probably didn't have the skill with mind magic to protect herself if Gabbie accidentally pulled too hard, especially while _distracted_, so it wouldn't be safe for it to be just the two of them...which ordinarily wouldn't be a problem, because Maïa had a convenient girlfriend right there, but Gabbie couldn't touch Lyra's mind _at all_, so that just wouldn't work. Which was sad, because Maïa really was _very_ pretty.

(Though, Gabbie had noticed — it was impossible for people to hide from a veela if they wanted someone _else_, too — other people didn't seem to think so so much, which...was confusing? She did tend to notice the feel of people's magic and stuff more than what they actually _looked_ like, so sometimes she was _really bad_ at telling whether someone was _physically_ pretty or not, but she didn't think Maïa was, like, _bad_-looking? Maybe people just got distracted by the hair and the teeth, because she'd _thought_ normal people liked girls being curvy and stuff, that was a whole _thing_, and especially for her age Maïa's figure was very obvious...)

When she thought about it, it was really probably _better_ if she came to an arrangement with someone she _wasn't_ sharing a room with? Because, see, outsiders, and humans in general, really... Even in the euphemisms they used, _sleeping together_ and _taking to bed_ and the like, she'd noticed a good shag could really...wipe people out? Like, they were tired after, so it was convenient to have a bed there. She meant, beds were convenient for _other_ reasons, they were just comfortable, but Gabbie honestly couldn't imagine wanting to _sleep_ right after, she was always _really_ keyed up, there was no way in hell, sometimes she didn't even get to sleep until the next night. For that reason, she usually thought, like, mid-morning was best? The afternoon also worked, but the earlier it was the less likely she was to mess up her sleep schedule (or annoy the people she was with), and it was kind of counterproductive to try actually _sleeping_ with someone she was shagging, because if they got sexy thoughts then _she_ would get sexy thoughts, and then sex happened, and then she had _far_ too much energy to, just, _lay in bed_...

Yeah, it was a whole thing. Not good. So even if any of her new British roommates were options, she probably shouldn't anyway.

She guessed now that Laïa was here, she might maybe be an option? Except, it couldn't be _only_ Laïa — her occlumency was good enough Gabbie wouldn't hurt her, at least not the first couple times, but if Gabbie was only drawing from her Laïa would get tired eventually. And, she was pretty sure, the only Beauxbatonnais here Gabbie _or_ Laïa knew (excluding Arte) were other People — Gabbie had spotted Laïa at the table a bit down that way, sitting with Fleur and Marc and Céleste, so — and that just wouldn't do Gabbie any good at all, would it? Maybe Laïa _and_ Izzie would be fine, but Izzie was younger, her occlumency wasn't as good...

Also, they would have to make sure other people didn't know about it, because cousins and siblings having sex with each other was one of those things outsiders were _very_ weird about, and that would be a pain...

Harry and Blasie were really looking like a better and better option the more she thought about it. They were both mind mages, so it was unlikely she'd hurt either of them one-on-one, but with _two_ of them there was virtually no risk of that at all. Not unless she pulled _really hard_ on purpose, which, that was a _horrible_ thing to do, an _extreme_ last resort she would only do if she really needed to to protect herself. (Which was silly, some outsiders seemed to think that was a thing the People just did, walk up to people and drain them dead, they apparently didn't realise the People themselves thought that was an absolutely disgusting thing to do — and also, they would _feel the person break and die_ while they did it, like it was _a part of them_ dying, and that just sounded _seriously_ unpleasant, why would anyone do that?!) And, Harry was also a rather powerful mage, so it was less likely she'd hurt him for that reason too, though Blaise didn't have nearly so much of a cushion, she'd have to look out for that. And Harry and Blaise's room was down in Slytherin, and Gabbie's awesome new balcony was way up in Gryffindor, so she didn't have to worry about accidentally keeping them up either, she'd just leave and let them sleep. Good she had somewhere else to go, she didn't know if she'd be able to sleep _underground_...

But even outside of practical concerns, Harry and Blaise were great! They were nice, and funny, and they were sweet and just _adorable_ together, and their magic was pretty — Harry more than Blaise, admittedly, but Blaise was also fine — and they were fun to hang out with. So that sounded just about perfect, didn't it?

But first she had to convince Arte to leave her alone with people who weren't Fleur or Lyra. Boo.

Gabbie glanced at the people around them, Brits and Danes, and spoke to Arte in Gascon. Arte didn't actually speak Gascon, but she _did_ speak Lengadocian — they weren't the same, but they were similar enough they could understand each other, and different enough from French the others probably wouldn't get it. "So, I'm gonna go with Harry and Blaise."

Trailing off from whatever she was saying to someone across the table from her, Arte blinked back at Gabbie for a second. "Er, okay? They're right over there, why are you—" There was a sharp ringing of realisation from Arte's head, one hand came up to rub at her temple. "Gabbie, that is a _terrible_ idea."

"It is not! They're very nice boys."

"I'm sure they are." Arte didn't _entirely_ sound like she believed it — she was mostly suspicious of Blaise, but not Harry, really. Apparently, Blaise's mum was kind of creepy — Gabbie knew she was the British Director of Education, and was also a businessperson in like computers and stuff in the muggle world, she didn't know what about that made her suspect — and Blaise himself kind of gave Arte the willies, though she couldn't say why.

Harry she felt sorry for, getting wrapped up in all this Tournament junk against his will, and also thought he was just vaguely adorable, in a non-threatening little kid sort of way. It was actually sort of funny just how completely beneath Arte's notice Harry was — not, like, as a _person_, she meant as competition. (Though she did _not_ think the same way about Lyra, according to Fleur in their wargame meeting Arte had warned the others to take Lyra deadly seriously, being a Cæciné and all they just took her word for it.) Gabbie was certain he would _hate_ that, she didn't plan on telling him, and had warned Arte to keep it to herself if she didn't want to offend him.

"I only mean, well, you haven't known them very long..."

"Really? It's been a whole _week_." She would have been perfectly fine shagging them within a couple hours of meeting, and she realised she was a veela, but...she didn't entirely understand why someone wouldn't be? She knew people could be skittish about these things, but she didn't _get_ it, was the point, so bringing it up wouldn't do any good.

Arte was a little exasperated with her, probably thinking _bloody veela_ to herself or something. "Sometimes I forget how cavalier you are about relationships." Well, _that_ was silly. "Okay, Harry, fine — he seems mostly all right, and I guess you are cousins by marriage and everything, so he's not going to do something stupid. But you don't know Zabini."

"He's Harry's boyfriend."

"Gabbie, he isn't _just_ Harry's boyfriend."

"No, but Harry wouldn't like him if he were terrible."

Arte shot her a flat look. "I'm almost positive his mother is a serial killer."

...Was _that_ why she thought Blaise's mum was creepy? Also, was she _really_? But, like, she was rich and famous and stuff, if she were going around killing people, wouldn't somebody notice and do something about it? Sounded kinda dubious to her. "I don't see what that has to do with anything. He's really nice! I mean, in a kinda cold, _I-find-you-amusing_ sort of way, but, you know what I mean." Nice people weren't necessarily _good_, or vice versa. Honestly, some of Gabbie's favourite people were also kind of horrible, not to _her_, but they could be scary and sometimes do bad things, and...well, she had trouble remembering she should care, sometimes, which she realised might end up getting her in trouble some day, but she wasn't sure what she was supposed to do about that, exactly.

A little, reluctantly amused smirk pulled at Arte's lips — which, it _should_, Arte was one of those people she liked despite how scary she could be. Then she sighed, rubbing at her forehead a little, exasperation and a sort of self-directed irritation falling off of her in little waves, made Gabbie's skin itch. "I'm coming at this from _completely_ the wrong angle. You realise a large proportion of the human supremacists in the Hogwarts population are likely to be concentrated in Slytherin. I've caught several names of people who followed their Dark Lord with the silly name."

"There are Greengrasses in Slytherin. And Inghams and Monroes." Those were all names she'd actually heard before, the latter two because they turned up on the periphery in Aquitanian history, and the former in the People's. The Greengrasses in particular had long been one of the British noble families most friendly to other peoples, including Gabbie's People, they'd had plenty of contact with enclaves of nonhumans across the Continent...though before the Statute, mostly, Britain had been relatively isolated for a while now. Daphne had seemed nice enough, if _very_ meticulous in her occlumency, so Gabbie couldn't be certain whether it was genuine, but she had no reason to think it wasn't.

"Yes, from what I've observed, it appears Slytherins tend to be one of either extreme. You might have friendly people, like Greengrasses and Monroes, but that doesn't mean stridently racist arseholes aren't there too." By the twitch of surprised amusement from a few of the people around them, the others at the table had caught the profanity — Arte _had_ said it in French, so. "Set aside any personal concerns, I worry it might not be safe."

"No one's gonna try anything, silly. And if they do, I can just flame out."

"And if the Slytherin dorms are warded against it?"

"Um, I'm pretty sure they're not?" Gabbie was certain Lyra could shadowwalk all over the castle, including into Slytherin. If Lyra could _shadow_-walk in and out of Slytherin, there was no reason to think Gabbie couldn't _flame_-walk — they weren't the same exact magic, of course, but they were similar enough in how they worked that they were equally difficult to ward against. And, it was more likely for there to be people in Hogwarts who could shadowwalk, since the People didn't have any syndicates in Britain — she was pretty sure Hogwarts had literally never had a veela or lilin student, though they would have been around for Triwizard Tournaments and things — so that was a good sign, she thought.

Arte looked less than pleased, but by the grumbling irritation in her head she couldn't refute Gabbie's argument. Her unspoken argument, but Arte had obviously been looking in her head, there was no practical distinction between thinking something and saying it aloud when talking to Arte. "If you didn't need to find _someone_ to sustain yourself, I wouldn't let you out of my sight. But I can't think of any better options."

"You don't _have_ to let me out of your sight, you know."

A cold, _unamused_ sort of feeling shooting through her head, Arte glared at her. When Gabbie thought about it, she should have guessed Arte wouldn't be comfortable joining in, she was still skittish with Gabbie alone even, that was obvious. "If something goes wrong, don't stay there and try to calm them down. Just leave. If you really need to to get away from someone, don't hesitate to set them on fire, let your father or Black deal with the consequences."

Grinning, Gabbie nodded. "Yep, sure, I can do that." She'd _try_ to do that, anyway — Gabbie's first impulse was always to try to make people feel better, so getting out of a tense situation didn't necessarily occur to her when it probably should, and _certainly_ not _hurting_ them. But, if doing that would make _Arte_ feel better, that would help her remember.

Arte sighed, but clearly decided to accept that as good enough. "Please check in with me when you're done, no matter how late it is." Because she would worry otherwise, she meant.

"I will. I probably won't be there very late, I'll try not to keep you waiting too long." After all, sex _did_ tend to wipe humans out, especially with the extra soul magic bit the People did, Harry and Blaise would probably conk right out not long after. Arte had practice with the rest of the team for the first task on top of all her schoolwork and stuff, she needed her sleep, Gabbie would go straight to her before finding something else to do with her time for the night.

"You won't be getting yourself into too much trouble while I'm asleep."

"No, I think I'll probably just go flying for a bit." She was..._mostly_ recovered from the strain of flying up here last week, and for some reason the idea of, just, aimlessly flying around was always _very_ appealing after she'd just shagged someone. "I'll see you in a bit," she chirped, leaning over to kiss Arte quick before popping up to her feet and skipping away.

There'd been a flash of blank surprise from Arte — she hadn't expected the kiss, and it'd happened so quickly she'd hardly had time to react — followed by a sort of...affectionate but baffled exasperation. If Gabbie had to guess, Arte thought it was weird that she'd kiss her before going off to shag other people, which, Gabbie didn't get what was so weird about that, really. Obviously, since she was thinking about going to have sex with Harry and Blaise it was only natural that she'd be in an affectionate mood, and when she was in an affectionate mood she tended to do affectionate things. She didn't see what was so unexpected about that. She would have been snuggled all up over Arte for that entire conversation if she didn't know doing that in public made Arte uncomfortable.

Before Gabbie had skipped too far away, the exasperation only pulsed stronger, so apparently Arte was still listening. _You know, I don't get you sometimes — you shouldn't be surprised by kissing now and again, I like you, silly!_

There was subtle pressure of thought on Gabbie's mind — like a mental nod, sort of, Arte acknowledging the point. Then she lifted away, and Gabbie was alone in her head.

Harry and Blaise were apparently done with dinner too, they were nearly out the door into the Entrance Hall by the time Gabbie caught up with them. She pounced at Harry from behind, a brief flare of anxiety shooting through his head before he recognised her, relaxing a bit, but still holding on to an undercurrent of nervousness (which was silly). Harry was conveniently short, it wasn't difficult at all to get an arm around his shoulders, his magic tingling and tickling under her skin. "Harry! Hi."

Slowly, Harry's arm slipped into the natural spot around her waist, the reluctance more out of nerves than anything. Gabbie had noticed Harry could be weirdly cautious about touching her, as though he wasn't certain he should, or was worried she'd get annoyed with him or something. (Which was _very_ silly, he was a mind mage, he should know better.) Tipping a smile down at her, he said, "Hi, Gabbie."

"Bubbly as always, I see," Blaise said from Harry's other side, his spring-breeze-cool mind flicking with amusement.

Gabbie tipped her head back to shoot Blaise a grin over Harry's shoulder, quick projecting a burst of her giddy cheerfulness out around her. Harry and Blaise were more than good enough at mind magic to resist it if they wanted to, but they didn't bother, taking on a bit of her _bubbliness_ for themselves.

There was an odd, choked _snrk_ noise from nearby, like a shocked laugh smothered before it could barely get out. Gabbie glanced that way to find one of the other Slytherins — er, Tracey, that was Tracey, right — had jerked to a sudden halt just a few steps into the Entrance Hall. She'd covered her face with both hands, Gabbie could feel her scrambling to firm up her occlumency. Must have hit her with that too. Whoops? Daphne had stopped next to her, fixing Tracey with a concerned frown. At least, Gabbie thought that was maybe supposed to be concerned, it was hard to tell with Daphne's mind completely closed up, she only got a faint trickle from Daphne most of the time, it could be hard to identify exactly what she was feeling. Hmm.

Oh well. Turning back to the boys, carefully speaking in her very best English, Gabbie said, "Is there cause to not be bubbly?"

Blaise didn't say anything, shaking his head with a smile. "Did you want something, Gabbie?" Harry asked. His head sparking with sudden anxiety, he added, "Not that I _don't_ want to— I mean, I'm just saying, me and Blaise were thinking about going down and, we have this essay for Transfiguration, you see..."

"Ooh! I will come with, I have not seen Slytherin, you know. I hear it is very pretty!" That was only kind of a lie — she _had_ heard the Slytherin dorm was pretty, with the fire and the silver and the big window with the lake outside it, but Gabbie suspected she wouldn't appreciate it much. The People tended not to like enclosed spaces, and Gabbie _really_ didn't like being underground. She could only stay with Evi in the Warrens — the dorms at Beauxbatons for people who just liked being underground, like dwarfs, or people who needed to be insulated from sunlight, like vampires — for a few hours at a time before she needed to leave.

"You realise," Blaise said, "that if you come with us we're not likely to get much work done."

"Yes. And?"

His mind bubbling with amusement, Blaise thought, loudly, _Harry, I think the veela plans to seduce us_.

"Yep! But, if you are busy I can come back later."

"No! I mean—" Harry cut himself off, embarrassed by his own outburst, a sudden pulse of nervousness intense enough Gabbie's skin itched. And he kept on being embarrassed, Gabbie could tell he was blushing without even having to look, she could practically feel the heat of it. "I mean, if you— Not that I wouldn't, er..." Harry had _no_ idea what he was saying, all awkward and nervous and flustered, he was being very adorable. And, he must be listening in on her head right now, because thinking he was being very adorable was just making him more embarrassed, which was making him even more flustered (which was adorable).

Gabbie was pretty sure what Harry was _trying_ to say was that, no, the work they had to do wasn't urgent, and they could totally all go have sex together instead, but he didn't want to seem, like, the only reason he would hang out with her was if sex was involved, he'd be perfectly fine just hanging out in Slytherin, he didn't want to come off like a jerk about it. Because he _did_ want her, yes — couldn't hide these things from veela — but he also just liked her in general — also couldn't hide that from veela — and he didn't want to come off like he only liked her for sexy reasons, but he was also an awkward teenage boy and had no idea what he was doing (which continued to be adorable).

Which was a silly thing to worry about! Honestly, she was a _veela_, she could feel everything he was feeling, she knew all that already. And even if she couldn't do it on her own, _that's what mind magic is _for, _silly!_

Harry huffed, muttered "Right, why don't I shut up, then." He tried to make it an annoyed-sounding grumble, but it came out a little tense, the mix of feelings jumbled up in his head too much to not slip into his voice at all.

Gabbie just giggled — she didn't really mean to, couldn't help it, the nervous excitement in Harry's head was infectious.

His magic practically shivering with amusement, Blaise hooked Harry's other arm, and the boys led her through the Entrance Hall and down toward Slytherin.

* * *

_And then they fuuuuuucked._

_I could write a fumbling teenage threesome — though less awkward than it could be, what with sexy veela magic smoothing things over — but I'm not gonna. No matter how adorable it should be, I doubt I have the experience with sex scenes to pull it off, and also I just don't feel like it. You'll just have to use your imagination._

[people who just liked being underground, like dwarfs] — _As a reminder, the Aquitanians call goblins dwarfs._

_The pacing should finally start kicking back up again soon, now that all of our side plots and characters and worldbuilding are established. Next chapter is weighing of the wands, and then the run up to the first task, and the second task only a couple chapters later, and then the lead up to the total clusterfuck that is Yule/Christmas. Good times._

_—Lysandra_


	38. Lyra Black Should Not Talk to the Press

Throwing another surreptitious glance at the young Madam Cæciné, Lyra asked again, _No, seriously, is she a white mage?_

_That would be telling, ducky._

Of course it would. Lyra couldn't expect Eris to be _helpful_, that would just be silly.

It was first thing in the morning on a Tuesday — they'd all been pulled from the Great Hall during breakfast, actually — and they were doing the traditional Weighing of the Wands thing. There had been a purpose to this, originally, confirming people had acceptable equipment to use in the Tournament, but the quality standards of wandmakers had steadily improved over the centuries, it really wasn't necessary anymore. Instead, it was pretty much just a press event.

At least, Lyra _assumed_ it was going to be, they'd been told there would be pictures (Lyra had slipped up to her dorm to change quick, Harry hadn't bothered) but Lyra hadn't actually seen who'd shown up yet. They'd taken over some old lecture hall for the event — one of those big, amphitheatre-like ones that had been used for joined sessions of classes back when the student population hadn't been so small, so hadn't been used for ages — and the champions had been squirrelled away in the professor's office (cleaned up by the elves, but entirely barren, basic furniture with no hints of personality) until everything was set up.

Except, not _just_ the champions — the younger ones were being escorted by an adult, presumably for legal reasons. (She and Harry had been asked if they wanted to call Sirius, but Lyra was a more responsible adult than he was anyway, so they hadn't bothered.) Ingrid was with a man Lyra assumed must be her father, which was slightly odd — the junior Durmstrang champion went by Ingrid _Hannasdottir_, so Lyra had sort of expected to see her mother instead. The Danes had a patronymic thing much like the Gaels, and maybe Ingrid used her mother's name for a similar reason Síomha Ní Ailbhe did. The whole point was to distinguish people, so it was typical for a child to be referred to with the name of the parent who was more well known by the locals — which meant they were more likely to be the sort of person who would do things like show up for this event — but in Síomha's example the reason was more practical: the Gaels called her Síomha Raghnaill simply because Raghnailt was a _much_ less common name than Aodhán. There could be a dozen girls called Síomha Aodháin, but there was only one Síomha Raghnaill. It was possible Ingrid was called Hannasdottir not because her mother was more well-known or important than her father, but just because there weren't any other Hannas wherever she lived.

Or maybe Ingrid's mother was just too busy to come all the way to Britain for a press event? Eh, whatever.

Lyra had hardly given Ingrid's father a second glance, too distracted by Cæciné's mother (she assumed). Arte, as Harry insisted on calling her, had made herself up all soft and delicate, with all the expected cosmetic charms, silvery high heels that clicked as she walked, and a lacy white dress light and filmy enough it floated behind her a little whenever she moved — rather like what Lyra thought Luna might look like, if she had the money for nice clothes (though less colourful). Lyra didn't buy the innocent little girl act for a second, of course, but she wasn't certain whether the Durmstrangers were magically sensitive enough to pick up how dangerous she was. (She _was_ pretty subtle, but the rigid control she had was a blazing red flag to anyone who could feel it.)

Arte's _mother_, though, looked like a battlemage. She was wearing fine dueling robes, etched with lines of silver and gold, the kind that was made out of leather and cotton and enchanted so intensely they practically glowed. The cloak in particular, casually thrown over her shoulders, cast in the red, gold, and blue of the Cæcinés — and the entire region of Languedoc, not coincidentally — was so thick with defensive enchantments Lyra had felt a flare of static on the air walking past her. She looked rather young, couldn't have been older than twenty when Arte had been born, and despite how differently they were made up — the elder's hair cut short, _ridiculously_ fit, lines from muscles and tendons visible here and there, as well as a few scars from dark magic, one very obvious toward the back of her right cheek and disappearing under her ear (she must have almost lost it) — their features were _very_ similar.

...Almost _too_ similar. Arte had put effort into making herself look all soft and delicate, so it was hard to tell at first glance, but...

_Is Cæciné a blood alchemy clone of her mother?_ That did seem a weird thing to have done, as young as her mother must have been — conceiving through blood alchemy was usually the last resort of people who couldn't otherwise, often not done until the mother was in her thirties or forties. Also, it was only _very_ rarely done without a contribution from a spouse, for a variety of reasons. See how vaguely creepy people found the suggestion Lyra was a direct clone of Bellatrix. (People didn't find it weird _just_ because it was Bellatrix, it was actually just a weird thing to do.)

_You're more right than you are wrong._

_What's _that _supposed to mean?_

_Artémisia Cæciné was not conceived in the ordinary fashion, but blood alchemy wasn't involved. Make of that what you will._

...Okay. Anyway, the point was, the elder Cæciné's magic was _very_ light, but not _just_ light — it _burned_. She did have that charismatic glimmer that most everyone she'd met that had any real contact with high magic seemed to, an echo of something older and larger and infinitely more powerful reverberating through them, but it wasn't just that, no, her magic was _intensely_ light in a way Lyra wasn't certain she'd ever felt before. It wasn't like either of the Lovegoods' — their magic was _very_ light, yes, but in a softer...gentler sort of way (despite the sharpness of a trained battlemage about Cassie, it was odd) — or even much like Fionn Ingham's — his had more of a harsh heat to it, but... Lyra didn't know how to put it.

The difference between the Light-ness of Fionn Ingham and this Cæciné, she felt, was like the difference between a kiln — intensely hot, but contained — and a _forest fire_ — wild and chaotic and _dangerous_.

It was a little unnerving, giddy tingles running down her spine just being in the same room with her (which Lyra suspected would be anxiety if she could feel fear), but it was also _fascinating_. She had to repress the urge to skip up to her and ask who her Patron was, because she, just, wanted to know, but she wasn't actually certain Cæciné was a white mage, and also she _really_ shouldn't talk about these things in public...

(Or maybe ask her for a friendly duel sometime, Lyra still _badly_ needed a competent dueling partner.)

_The Cæcinés have some kind of arrangement with a patron god, or maybe two or three, I don't know, something like that? Like the Covenant, but not really, like...more just a few family gods they've been worshipping forever, I don't know the details, really. Which Aspects were they again? Because that feels really _fun_..._

_There are a few among the Light I do quite like. And no, I'm not telling you. You could figure it out for yourself if you thought about it._

_You're no fun_. Lyra formed an image of herself, arms folded and glaring for a second before turning on her heel and stomping away, and tossed it over to Eris.

_Liar, you love me_.

Lyra huffed, but she didn't really have a response for that, so she turned back to Harry instead. He was fidgeting, shooting occasional glances toward one side of the room. Once she figured it out, she groaned, "Gods and Powers, Harry, if you want to talk to Krum so badly just go talk to him!"

"I can't just— He's _Viktor Krum_, Lyra!" he hissed, shooting the other occupants of the room a shifty glance. Which was unnecessary, they couldn't hear them, she'd thrown up Snape's neat muffling spell as soon as they'd gotten here.

She still didn't see why that was a problem — he was just a _quidditch_ _player_, honestly! _Harry_ was a more notable figure than Krum was, even outside of Britain, where people didn't care about the Boy Who Lived thing nearly as much. There was no reason to be all... Lyra wasn't sure what his deal was, really. So, Lyra decided to hook Harry by the elbow and drag him over toward Krum to handle the introductions herself.

It was for his own good, really. By how quickly he stopped struggling — sooner than Maïa had, when Lyra had pulled her over to Vicky in her pyjamas — Harry was surrendering to her better judgement. _Finally_, everything would be a whole lot easier if Harry would actually _listen_ to her more. He wouldn't be in this Tournament in the first place, for starters...

Around the time Harry had gotten over his pointless nervousness, he and Krum chattering away about quidditch nonsense, the door into the lecture hall was pushed open, McGonagall calling them in. The desk at the focus of the room had been removed, replaced by a long table with six chairs — in front of each pair of chairs a banner was draped over the front, the Hogwarts crest in the middle and Beauxbatons and Durmstrang to either side. The first couple rows of desks were taken over by guests, mostly press, judging by the panoply of notepads in hand and the popping and flashing of cameras. (Harry flinched at the first flash, before forcing himself to relax.) Toward the right side of the room Lyra spotted the judges, and toward the left were the muggle guests, easily identifiable by the very dangerous-looking guards hovering over their Queen.

Lyra didn't see Michael — he apparently had other work to do, he'd been gone since a day or two after the selection, leaving his delegation here under the care of one of his subordinates. This subordinate was, unfortunately, _far_ more boring, Lyra hadn't bothered talking to him for more than a few seconds. Michael _would_ be coming back, right, the First Task was later this week...

Standing near the table was old Master Ollivander, surrounded by a small pack of people. The older man standing at his shoulder must be Lord Ollivander — not the same one as in Lyra's time, she didn't know this one's name — a young woman in modest enchanter's robes must be his apprentice — Lyra had heard her name was Zoë Ollivander, a Slytherin in Dora's year, but she didn't know anything else about her — the Ollivanders flanked by a trio of Hit Wizards — as expected, master wandmakers were traditionally considered a resource of some national prestige, they were always escorted by battlemages at public events. Master Ollivander was standing in front of the busy, noisy crowd with his usual slightly-absent serenity, silvery eyes staring out at a wall unfocused.

They were getting to the actual wand part of this first, apparently. There was a little bit of confusion, champions and Hogwarts apprentices, pressed into service to help run the event, shuffling about under the muttering of guests and clicking of cameras, before they were lined up at the back of the room — she and Harry were at the back, Cæciné just in front of her, but Lyra couldn't tell at a glance how they'd been— Oh, descending by age, she got it, okay. Krum was called up to Ollivander first, to even more muttering from the spectators, cameras flashing to life again.

The cool-but-friendly cheer he'd had talking quidditch with Harry vanished the instant he'd stepped out in front of cameras, Krum moodily plodded up to the master wandcrafter, grudgingly handing over his wand. Oblivious of the mood in the room to an almost Lovegood-ish degree, Ollivander accepted his wand with a humble bow.

Holding it up close to his nose, silver eyes practically glowing with professional eagerness, he turned it around in his fingers, little sparks of magic flashing in the air around him, humming to himself. "Hmm, Regensburg Imperial school, yes, but the styling in the focusing elements... Mister Krum, this is a Gregorović wand, yes?"

Some of the tension went out of Krum's shoulders, he nodded. "Yes, Master."

"Yes, yes, interesting work he's been doing, quite a distinctive style... The wood appears to be holding up quite well — hornbeam and dragon heartstring, if I'm not mistaken?" Krum nodded. "Yes, fine complements. My personal wand is hornbeam and dragon, you know." By the excited titters in the crowd, no, nobody knew that — Lyra certainly hadn't, but she also didn't really care. "The integrity of the enchantments seems to be...yes..."

His constant turning around of the wand suddenly found it in a normal grip, with the slightest jab he cast a spell — a trio of little, brightly-colourful tropical songbirds appeared, flittering around for a bit. After flying a couple circles around Ollivander, two of them winged away, disappearing somewhere up the rows of desks; the third landed briefly on his apprentice's head, she flailed, scaring the thing off, her own wand appeared in her hand to vanish it with a snarl.

For all the fuss his little bit of conjuration produced, Ollivander hardly seemed to notice, nodding serenely. "Yes, perfect condition. Good luck, Mister Krum," he said, handing it back with another bow. Krum gave him a respectful nod, then wandered off, sitting behind the Durmstrang banner at the table.

Next was Fleur. Gabbie's big sister walked up to the master wandcrafter with effortless veela grace, ignoring the less than pleasant looks she was getting from some of their assembled guests, offering her wand to Ollivander with a flourish. He accepted it with another respectful bow, giving her wand the same eager treatment Krum's had gotten. Ollivander was _clearly_ a huge nerd for wands, which Lyra couldn't judge him for at all, wands were neat.

"My, my, late Alexandrian, hmm... An eccentric design, I'm not familiar with— Ooh, the filters on the channeling elements, fascinating, fascinating. The wood is...ebony?"

"_Grenadille d'Afrique, Maître_, it is similar."

"Oh, yes, one of the African rosewoods, I don't use it myself, but... Is that a veela feather?" he asked, a note of surprise entering his voice. "Your own?"

"My grandmother's, _Maître_."

"Yes, yes, that would do it." The problem with using material from magical beings, Lyra knew, was that they tended to be very temperamental, the wand would rarely cooperate with a human user — but, if the wand were made with material _from_ the user, or a relative who consented, that problem could be circumvented. "It appears to... Well, let's see if I can...

"_Orches!"_ A swirl of Fleur's wand, and a bouquet of flowers burst from the tip, blue and white and yellow (Beauxbatons colours). "Mm," Ollivander groaned, turning them over in his hands, "that didn't come out quite right — your wand doesn't like me, I think. But it is very good work, and it does appear to agree with you. Good luck, Miss Delacour." He handed back her wand with another bow, vanishing the flowers with a flick of his wrist. Fleur wandered off, taking the Beauxbatons seat at the end of the table.

Next was Ingrid. After a quick nod at her father, Ollivander took her wand, turning it under his eyes only a brief moment before chirping, "Ah! Here we have another Gregorović creation. Yes, this one is dragon — Gregorović does like his dragon heartstring — and the wood is...a conifer, I'm certain. Larch?"

"_Mestar_, this 'larch' is _lærke_, _ja_?"

"Oh, my apologies, Miss." And then Ollivander spoke in Danish, because of course he did — Lyra's Danish wasn't particularly good, she only caught about every other word. Nothing important, just babbling about her wand seemingly having been put under some stress, but still being in good condition. Ollivander tested the wand with another conjuration, this time three twisting streams of water, which he levitated, looping around to form an orb in his off hand, condensing into a pale blue crystal he then vanished in a flash of green sparks. "Perfect. _Lykke til_, Ingrid Hannasdottir."

The Cæcinés were up next. Before accepting Arte's wand, Ollivander actually gave her mother a formal bow — probably picking up on how scary her magic was...or just because they were Cæcinés, they _were_ one of the oldest and most influential noble families in all of Europe. The second his fingers touched the wood, Ollivander brightened, chirped, "Ah! Yes, Third Attican Revival, I'm a master of the same style, you know. This is... Yes, this wand is the work of Elio d'Onofrio, I believe."

Smiling sweetly — nice try, Lyra _still_ didn't buy it — Arte said, "Yes, Master, it is. My family traveled to Taranto specifically to meet with him."

"And a wise choice that was! Elio is quite talented. Let's see... Oh my, holly and phoenix, is it? Fascinating coincidence, that." Lyra didn't know why that was a coincidence, exactly, but okay. "Your wand is in excellent condition, and in good spirits — the magic you have been casting agrees with its temperament quite nicely. However, this wand will not allow me to cast even the simplest of charms with it, its loyalty to you is absolute." Returning the wand with a bow, he said, "Good luck, Miss Cæciné."

And now it was Lyra's turn. Ollivander was rather older than she remembered, grey hair gone thin and scraggly, more lines in his face — he was older than Dumbledore, she knew, he had to be, what, nearly a hundred thirty by now. Though, he didn't _look_ older than Dumbledore, but Dumbledore looked old for his age — for a mage, that is, most muggles didn't even make it to 113 — even comparing photos from the 60s against the Dumbledore she remembered from her home universe, she didn't know what was up with that. (A curse from his fight with Grindelwald, maybe?) But he still had that interesting combination of Seer airheadedness and sharp academic zeal, she assumed he had a few good decades of wand-crafting in him still.

Ollivander took her wand with another polite bow, turning it under his fingers like the others'. There was something odd about the quality of magic sparking around it, smooth and cool and...strangely unfocused. Before Shirazi (Flamel) started teaching Divination, she might not have recognised it, but she'd had enough contact with it now she could — Ollivander was analysing their wands through divination. Which wasn't that much of a surprise, when she thought about it, didn't the Ollivanders have a sort of psychometry thing that had been passed down through their family for...had to be _millennia_, now, they'd been making wands since at least the Athenian Golden Age...

It was...probably a good thing that she'd needed to replace her wand. Ollivander had _made_ the thing, if he really was a Seer he _definitely_ would have recognised it.

"Hmm, hmm," Ollivander dithered, his wrinkly brow wrinkling further with an absent frown. "I'm afraid I don't recognise this wandmaker at all. There are elements of Ming Imperial to the style but... Well, an American, certainly?"

Lyra nodded. "Yes, Master, he's Nishinābe. Can't pronounce the name, I'm afraid." She'd completely forgotten it, actually — she hadn't stuck around in the area long enough to pick up any of the language, because _American languages_ (ugh), it had been long and very foreign, slipped her mind.

"Yes, I thought so — no Old World wandmaker is mad enough to try to use _thunderbird feathers_ in a wand meant for use by a human." It could be her imagination, but it sounded like Ollivander sounded more amused than disapproving, possibly even impressed.

Lyra tried not to giggle. "I'm sure they're simply using what they have available, Master. They have different magical beings and creatures over there. Besides, don't many Old World wandmakers have a similar opinion about using _phoenix_ feathers?"

Ollivander gave her a flat, empty look, but didn't answer — he didn't have to, she knew she was right. "This wand has not been in your possession very long, so feels almost new. However, your American wandmaker designed an especially fit match — I would not dare attempt to cast with this wand. It might bite me," he finished, an odd note of distant humour on his voice. Offering it back to her, he said, "Good luck, Miss Black."

Lyra grinned — Ollivander couldn't possibly know this, of course, but Luck was _always_ on her side.

...Or maybe he could know that, it wasn't out of the question he was good enough of a Seer to know about Eris without being told. Hmm.

Anyway, taking her wand back with the proper respectful nod of one master to another in their field — not that anyone in the room probably realised she was practically a master cursebreaker, but the proper respect of a layman to a master wandcrafter would have seemed overly formal to this crowd — Lyra skipped up to the table, dropping into one of the seats behind the Hogwarts banner. The one right next to Cæciné.

Lyra had never gotten _quite_ this close to her before — her magic was _very_ warm, harsher than the Lovegoods' while not so sharp as her mother's, but there was also that shiny, attractive glimmer of high magic around her. Somehow, Lyra hadn't actually noticed that before. It wasn't... It didn't quite feel the same as the Lovegood girls had, or Theo's, more of an echo, less immediate...but at once more _fundamental_. Like the touch of divinity on her wasn't something that had been left behind, a relic of getting closer to Magic than humans really should, but more like it was...just what her magic was like.

...Rather more like Harry, actually. Which was weird, when she thought about it — Harry hadn't done any high magic himself, really, but his mother _certainly_ had, probably even when she was pregnant with him, which could have had an effect on his magic. That had been Lyra's theory before, but now that she knew Lily had actually asked Persephone to _be his godmother_, like the brilliant madwoman she'd apparently been — and that Harry had _apparently died_, and been turned around by Kore at the border, _multiple times_ — she'd decided he'd simply had enough contact with Death from young enough to leave an echo, even if that contact had been indirect.

While Harry sidled up to Ollivander, his shoulders rigid and jaw clenched (he _really_ didn't like the crowd watching him and the cameras, Lyra was _Lyra_ and she could tell at a glance), Lyra cut a quick glance at the elder Cæciné, looming nearby against the wall behind them. Maybe... Maybe the children of black or white mages had their own kind of god-touched-ness. Lyra hadn't met any such children before, that she was aware of, so it made sense she wouldn't have recognised it for what it was, that could explain it. Lily hadn't been _formally_ dedicated, but Lyra suspected that didn't actually matter so much. After all, these were human things, if Kore considered Lily _hers_ enough to, just, _keep her_, yeah, it seemed like the difference at that point was just semantic.

Leaning closer to her, Lyra hissed, "Hey, Cæciné, is your mother a white mage?"

The girlish, pleasant sort of expression on Cæciné's face abruptly vanished. She glared at Lyra for a quick second, but didn't answer, turning back toward their audience again, her smile looking slightly strained.

Yep. Lyra was right, she knew it.

...Except it didn't seem likely Cæciné would actually _tell_ her who her Patron was now. Dammit.

Back where things were happening, Ollivander perked up the instant his fingers touched Harry's wand. "Ah, yes, I remember this one, I remember it well. I crafted it myself, in the winter of Nineteen Twenty-Six — one of a pair of wands built around a gift of two phoenix feathers I'd just received, this of holly and the other of yew."

Oh, _that_ was what the _fascinating coincidence_ was, Harry and Cæciné's wands were made of the same materials. Which didn't necessarily mean anything — phoenix feather wands were correlated with nothing but the channeling threshold of the owner, and the lore around wand woods was _very_ hit and miss, and was often even different in other cultures — but it was kind of interesting as a random happenstance, she guessed.

"You might find it interesting to know, Mister Potter," Ollivander said, wand still turning in his hands, "that you have met the phoenix who provided the feather at the heart of your wand."

"Yeah, I know, it was Fawkes, Dumbledore's phoenix." Harry then blinked, frowning a little — not at the excited chattering that revelation inspired, no, almost as though he were surprised. Lyra would wonder if he hadn't known he knew that, but that wouldn't actually be that weird, he was turning out to be pretty good with divination.

It was hard to tell from this angle, but she thought Ollivander might be giving him a level, forbidding look. "Mister Potter, a phoenix is not a pet, that might be said to _belong_ to another. They are beings as intelligent as you or I, and often far wiser, gifted with insight gleaned over centuries of life. _Fawkes_, as he is called these days, has lived in this valley for centuries — at least since the Dark Lord Ignatius Gaunt was rooted out of this very castle in the Thirteenth Century, and probably longer. He acts as advisor and companion to the Headmaster, not a pretty decoration."

Interesting, Lyra hadn't actually known that. She meant, she vaguely remembered there being hints of a phoenix around Hogsmeade in her original timeline — their magic was kind of hard to miss — but he hadn't been _nearly_ as visible as he was here. Maybe Dippet simply didn't appreciate Fawkes's company the way Dumbledore obviously did...

"No, I didn't— I know phoenixes are beings, I just meant..." Harry trailed off, awkwardly shuffling his feet, his cheeks going noticeably pink. "I misspoke, sir, I'm sorry."

Lyra tried not to wince. They _really_ needed to work on Harry's etiquette. Getting a bit flustered over a slip, sure, but this was just embarrassing. And, _sir?_ Honestly, he had five people ahead of him using the proper address, that shouldn't have been difficult to figure out!

It was one thing to know what you were _supposed_ to do, and get it slightly wrong on purpose to make a point. It was another thing entirely to stick your foot in your mouth out of ignorance, and come off like a bumbling, thoughtless _moron_.

Ollivander wrapped up quickly enough after that, testing Harry's wand with a quick splash of conjured wine before handing it back. Dumbledore, speaking on behalf of the panel of judges, thanked him for his assistance, as graciously as he was capable of doing this sort of thing. And then, with a few bows and swishes of cloaks, the Ollivanders and their Hit Wizard escort turned and swept past the spectators, and before long they were gone.

Unsurprisingly, once the actual talking part of the event was supposed to get going, Zee jumped up to her feet, sashaying to the centre of the room to address their guests. There was an introduction, quickly pointing out their guests and the judges — Zee actually acknowledged Vicky first, which did make sense, any order of precedence Lyra had ever heard of put monarchs at the top (or, right under manifestations of the Powers and certain high priests that didn't exist anymore), whether they had magic or not.

Speaking of manifestations of the Powers, it wasn't until Zee went through introducing their judges that Lyra finally noticed that Angel wasn't here. Which was odd, because her magic was _very_ distinctive, Lyra must have been too distracted by the Cæcinés, and also not at all surprising, because she kind of doubted Angel had the patience for a tedious event like this. As unnervingly powerful as she was — probably the most intimidating mind mage she'd ever met, which was saying something, because Professor Riddle had been pretty damn impressive — Selwyn was definitely a more...diplomatic representative for Miskatonic.

Before they got to actually taking questions, Zee wanted all the champions to stand up and introduce themselves quick — she suggested they tell their names, where they're from, and what sort of particular specialties or skills they might have, if applicable, but any other personal details they might want to offer were also fine. Just don't get too carried away, they did have business to get to (a few polite chuckles from their guests).

Which was just..._inane_, but... She guessed it was sort of reasonable to start with that sort of basic information, they did have champions from, er, probably four different countries. It wouldn't be reasonable to expect foreign press to know who all of them were.

Still irritating, but fine.

They were starting at the Durmstrang table and working their way down, so Krum was first again. With every hint of reluctance, he forced himself up to his feet, addressing their audience with a surly glare — it was kind of hilarious how much he clearly didn't want to be here, and just how aggressively obvious he was making it. (Apparently, Krum was sick of press events, and couldn't even be bothered to pretend to care anymore.) "My name is Viktor Rumenov Krum, I was born in the Seventh of August, 'Seventy-Six, in _Varna, Balgarija_." Krum's pronunciation of the name was very obviously in the native Slavic. "So far as skills useful in this tournament go, I am top of my dueling class, due in part to skill in combat transfiguration." Krum slumped down to a seat again, looking almost relieved to be done.

Lyra raised an eyebrow at the man — _combat transfiguration?_ Using transfiguration in a duel to any real practical effect was not an easy thing to do, not at all, usually something only professional duelists or battlemages developed much skill with. An eighteen-year-old pulling it off was actually pretty impressive. Lyra had sort of been operating on the assumption Krum would be a pushover, just a quidditch nut who'd be useless on the ground, but it sounded like he might actually be a problem.

Probably not _nearly_ as big a one as Cæciné, but still.

There was some appreciative muttering at the thought of _an eighteen-year-old proficient in combat transfiguration_, not surprisingly. While Ingrid waited for them to quiet again so she could speak, Lyra glanced around — and finally spotted Luna Lovegood, sitting near the front of the crowd, madly scribbling on a muggle-style notebook. It shouldn't have taken Lyra so long to notice her, it was _Luna bloody Lovegood_, though in her defence the girl was a _lot_ less stridently colourful than usual. She was wearing what looked like flannel trousers and a jumper, the trousers cross-hatched in a fake tartan-ish pattern, greens and yellows and blues, the jumper surprisingly plain, just a light sky blue. Though, there was a hat, because of course there had to be a hat — less garish than the Press Hat of Unobtrusiveness, a faded green Tyrolean hat, a handful of fluffy feathers in green and yellow and pink stuck into the band (probably spare quills).

Lyra hadn't seen much of Luna since popping in on her freak-out over Angel being Angel, but she seemed...better? There was still a bit of exhausted tension about her, but her hair had gone back to its normal smooth sheen, all the frazzle gone, the bags under her eyes almost entirely faded, every hint of that mad twitchiness gone. Still not _entirely_ back to her old Lovegood-ness, but mostly over that little episode of hers, at least.

Which, good. Lyra might not _get_ Luna, but she was at least more interesting than a normal person, if she was going to be around more she'd at least make things less boring. And hey, she was a Truthspeaker now, so—

...Wait a second...

"I am Ingrid Hannasdottir, born Eighteen _Mars_...ah, _syttiætta?"_ she muttered, turning to Krum.

"Seventy-eight."

"_Ja_, Eighteen _Mars_, Seventy-Eight, in Ystad, _Skåne_." That was Scania in Danish, right? Lyra's Danish was _really_ sketchy... Ingrid struggled through the rest of her little introduction, talking about dueling but especially divination and nature magic, with frequent help from Krum on how to translate one word or another.

Lyra spent most of it watching Luna, thinking. So far as white mages went, dedicants of Truth were actually relatively common — their Patrons tended to gift them the ability to separate truth from lies, so there had been a time they'd been almost omnipresent in primitive legal systems, ensuring the testimony given to judges and their peers (and the claims rulers made to the people they ruled) was factual, or at least in good faith. In fact, the Wizengamot had once had an official Truthspeaker, though the post had been vacant since the 12th Century or so. (It technically still existed, as they'd never moved to abolish it, they'd simply never nominated anyone to fill it for half of their history.) Lyra had never asked if Luna had gotten it, they hadn't really talked about her new Patron at all...

...but she did recall, now, a few low, soft, disdainful mutterings of, "_Liar."_

If Lyra were to say something a normal person would consider _absolutely ridiculous_, well, chances were the _professionals_ would assume she was messing with them. They'd go to official sources to get the official story, and maybe put in a couple lines acknowledging she'd said something ridiculous, that she was clearly some kind of prankster. Those Blacks, you know how they can be sometimes. But Luna would be able to feel it.

And the _Quibbler_ would _publish the truth_, no matter how impossible it sounded.

Lyra grinned.

Ingrid finally finished with her valiant struggle against the English language, Harry got to his feet. "I'm Harry Potter, er, July Thirty-First, Nineteen Eighty, in, uh..."

Lyra resisted the urge to roll her eyes. "Godric's Hollow, Harry."

"Right! Thanks. Er...that's in England, right?" There was a wave of awkward chuckles, Harry stood stiffly, flushing a little.

"Yes, Harry, Godric's Hollow is in England," she said, sarcasm dripping from every syllable.

"Well, excuse me, Lyra, I've never _been_ there! Not that I remember anyway. I grew up in Surrey, which, er, is also in England...um..." Well, he should have just said Surrey then, shouldn't he have? Gods and Powers, this kid sometimes... Harry was silent a short moment, fidgeting a little, frowning up at the ceiling. "Um, I don't think I have any particular skills, really? I mean, unless _not dying_ counts, I'm pretty good at that." There was some more laughter from their audience, though without that awkward, slightly-guilty tone to it, as though sharing in the joke this time — _yeah, I suppose the only person known to have survived the Killing Curse __**is**_ _talented at not dying, isn't he?_

...Honestly, Lyra wasn't certain she'd ever met someone who so seriously underestimated their own abilities as Harry bloody Potter. "He's a pretty good mind mage, and he's a genius with charm work, especially polarised spells." In her peripheral vision, she saw Harry shoot her a surprised look. "For fuck's sake, Harry, you _saved my life_ with a _Patronus Charm_ not three months ago! How many thirteen-year-olds do you know who can cast a Patronus?"

Harry blinked; as a few appreciative mutters swept through the room, _both_ Cæcinés fixing him with speculative glances, Harry took in their reaction with wide eyes, apparently dumbfounded that people considered casting a _Patronus_ at _thirteen_ — and better yet, successfully pulling it out in a tense, life-or-death situation, that was often _much_ harder to do with light magic — to be in any way impressive. "Oh. Right."

Lyra sighed.

But then it was her turn. Throwing off her irritation with her _ridiculous_ baby cousin — honestly, what was she going to do with this kid — she popped up to her feet, cocking her hips with a smirk. "I'm Lyra Bellatrix, First Daughter of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black." That hadn't _always_ been her name, of course, but it was now, so it should still register as truthful to the little Truthspeaker in the audience. "I was born on the Seventh of January, Nineteen Fifty, at Ancient House, the ancestral home of my family, which is situated at an undisclosed location somewhere in England. I spent roughly six and a half years apprenticed to _the_ Ciardha Monroe, and as such I have particular skill in all forms of runic magic — enchanting, warding, cursebreaking, and recently I've been getting into runic casting. And I'm also pretty damn awesome in a fight, if I do say so myself." Throwing the room a cocky grin, Lyra plopped back into her chair, primly folding her legs like a proper young lady.

The response to her little introduction, judging by the glances and the muttering, was a baffled sort of confusion. Lyra caught a couple wry smiles here and there, people presumably making notes about how silly this Black girl was, the family tradition of flagrantly taking the piss was clearly still running strong, had to watch out for that one, the scamp.

Luna had gone still, staring at her with silvery Seer eyes wide. But for only a handful of seconds before she suddenly jumped into motion, madly scribbling away at her notepad.

_Tee hee_.

Next to her, Cæciné was staring at her with narrow-eyed curiosity — Lyra even felt a faint tingling, probably Cæciné trying to get some sense of her emotional state, to figure out if she was lying or not. If Harry and Gabbie (and Riddle before them) were any indication, she was going to get absolutely nothing, which Lyra guessed might be frustrating to someone accustomed to knowing what people were feeling all the time. How _awful_ that must be for her.

Cæciné shared an unreadable glance with her mother before standing up to take her turn. "Artèmisia Cecinà," she said with a little curtsy, with the modern Aquitanian pronunciation — which sounded _very_ odd to Lyra's ears, _are-the-me-sho say-she-nah_, just _weird_, Lyra was much more familiar with the French. "I was born January Twenty-Third, Seventy-Nine, outside Narbona, Aquitània." Lyra blinked — _nar-boo-no_ had to be Narbonne, right, spelled like the Latin but pronounced stupid? Bloody Aquitaines.

Maybe she should actually work on picking up an Aquitanian language, as long as Gabbie and the Delacours and Cæciné were around. It was easy enough to _read_ Occitan — it didn't really look _that_ different from French when written down, especially around the twelfth through the fifteenth century or so, back when a lot of "French" literature had actually been written in Provençal — but it sounded different enough she often had to pause for a moment and try to recreate the original Latin spelling in her head. (Which meant she couldn't follow conversation at all, too quick to pick apart on the fly.) Since she was apparently an omniglot anyway, there wasn't any reason she couldn't pick up, well, whichever dialect Gabbie spoke...and maybe the veela language while she was at it... Oh, and also Danish, her Danish was terrible.

She just had to relax her god-given occlumency long enough to actually pick anything up, that shite was just bloody _hard_...

Anyway, Cæciné said something about specialising in light charms, elemental magic, and implied she had a talent for low ritual without explicitly stating it (probably mostly ritualised elemental magic, that shite was damn impressive sometimes). Because apparently Cæciné thought she was Cassie bloody Lovegood or something, those happened to be the same branches of magic Cassie had learned to exploit to such devastating effect. Though, Cæciné _didn't_ say she'd been being trained as a battlemage since she'd been a small child — which _obviously_ she had been, she was a bloody _Cæciné_, and look at her mother... — and also failed to mention she was a legilimens — which maybe wasn't so obvious, Lyra had no idea how detectable they were to normal people (presumably more than they were to Lyra, but she wasn't sure).

Maybe Lyra shouldn't have outed Harry as a mind mage. She sometimes forgot what other people did and did not know, and... Well, while she did understand intellectually that mind mages were rather unnerving, just on principle, sometimes she forgot how very vulnerable normal people were to them — Lyra had perfect god occlumency, so it wasn't like they were any kind of threat to her. (With the exception of Selwyn, but she was a thousand fucking years old, there weren't very many mind mages that powerful around.) Cæciné hadn't offered it, though, and she probably knew what she was doing, so...

Harry hadn't seemed annoyed with her, but he also certainly _didn't_ know what he was doing. Maybe Lyra should have kept her bloody mouth shut about that one.

Lyra was distracted enough wondering if she'd fucked up the _taking care of the baby cousins_ thing that she more or less entirely missed Delacour's introduction. Whoops. Not that Lyra cared — she knew Delacour was from Gascony already, and she was a veela, so light and fire magics, and there were a fair number of enchanters in the family, so she probably had a decent background in runic magic too. Lyra had thought Delacour might be the only even _mild_ competition for her in this thing — since Lyra was apparently shadow-kin now, dealing with veela fire might pose actual problems for her, and while she doubted Delacour was _nearly_ as good of a cursebreaker as Lyra she might know enough to at least interfere with any runic magic she might try — but now that there was a bloody _god-touched Cæciné_ in the game, yeah, Lyra wasn't really concerned about the little bird anymore.

In fact, Lyra was increasingly getting the feeling that the war game this weekend might turn out to be really, _really fun_. It'd been _months_ since she'd gotten into a proper fight, and if Cæciné was actually good enough to _keep up_...

Anyway, introductions done, the floor was then opened up to random questions — which was _also_ inane, but normal people could be like that, nothing for it. The questions were mostly focused on Krum, because of the whole international quidditch star thing, and also Harry, because of the drama and mystery around his surprise selection. (Well, the British were also focused on him because of the whole Boy Who Lived thing, but that didn't apply to the foreign journalists, obviously.) The questions for Krum, as well as the rest of the champions, were usually stupid boring things about how they're finding Britain, and their hopes for the Tournament, blah blah. Probably the most interesting was when one Aquitanian reporter just flat-out asked Delacour if she was worried she might be murdered by the infamously racist Brits, it was _hilarious_, Lyra completely failed to hold in a delighted cackle.

Before the foreigners could get any ideas, Lyra swiftly followed that by saying they had a marriage alliance indirectly through Lise Delacour (yes, _that_ Lise Delacour, Harry here was her nephew, you know), and Fleur's sister Gabbie was under Lyra's personal protection, anyone who fucked with the Delacours while they were in Britain would answer to the House of Black. She wouldn't want these foreign journalists to go writing in the foreign press that Lyra was some kind of crazy human supremacist, after all.

Of course, _that_ was immediately followed up with questions about conflicts of interest with the judges, and since Lyra and Harry were cousins — and also Fleur, by marriage — whether even the competition itself would be fair, whether some of them might not collaborate to screw over the others. Zee had popped up again to explain the arrangement the judges had to deal with the various overlapping interests they'd ended up with, and Lyra pointed out that she _seriously_ doubted Fleur would be going easy on them, and Lyra herself had no compunction kicking the shite out of her cousins if the situation called for it.

A perceptive observer might notice Lyra had _not_ said she'd be doing her damnedest against Harry. Because Lyra still fully intended to engineer the Tournament so Harry came out the winner, but it would be funnier if they didn't see it coming — she also hadn't bragged about how she was _totally_ going to win the Tournament, like a couple of the others had (because she didn't want Luna to pick up on the lie and get any ideas). But nobody called her on it, this time.

(Also, she'd sort of been under the impression that two champions collaborating to screw over the third, and then work out who would come away the victor between themselves, was a time-honoured Triwizard Tournament strategy that had been successfully employed any number of times, especially by the two visiting champions to attempt to counterbalance the hosting champion's institutional advantage, but she guessed that wasn't really the point.)

Harry got some reasonable questions, about whether he'd gotten any word on how he'd ended up in the Tournament in the first place — the British press was clearly more skeptical, but the foreigners accepted at face-value his claim that he hadn't entered himself — and whether he was concerned about being the youngest, least-qualified participant (Lyra at least had Runes and Arithmancy OWLs) — he made it _very_ clear he only wanted to get through this in one piece, and that he'd gotten assurances from the panel of judges that precautions would be taken. At this point, Flamel-as-Slytherin got up to his (her?) feet to explain that, so long as the events took place on Hogwarts grounds, the wards could be fixed to remove the champions from true mortal peril, and that he was already working on it. Unlike many previous Triwizard Tournaments, none of the Champions would be in any _real_ danger.

(It could be Lyra's imagination, but she thought she caught Ingrid and Fleur lighten up, just a little bit.)

And Harry also got some silly questions. Apparently, the _Herald_ was curious about how Harry felt about constantly being put in danger at Hogwarts, where he should have every expectation of safety — which was ridiculous, Hogwarts had _never_ been safe, accidents and sabotage had been an expected danger here for nearly as long as it'd existed — and _Witch Weekly_ was inordinately curious about Harry's love life. Who the hell had even invited _Witch Weekly_ to this thing, the bloody rag. Harry did actually answer, about how he'd been dating Blaise Zabini (yes, _that_ Zabini) for months now, but he cut himself off, flushing — he didn't mention Gabbie for some reason, they weren't exactly subtle, even _Lyra_ had noticed.

The best question Harry got was from Rita Skeeter.

Before this summer, Lyra had only been sort of vaguely familiar with Skeeter. She'd been in Lyra's year at Hogwarts, actually, one of the handful of muggleborns they'd had in Slytherin. According to Zee, she'd also been a Slytherin in their year in this timeline, which was weird, because people claimed there hadn't been a muggleborn in Slytherin for longer than that — though, Lyra had noticed, people tended to forget Skeeter was a muggleborn..._somehow._ (Just look at her, she was _exactly_ the sort of stereotypical muggleborn the blood purists railed about...) Lyra barely remembered her, she hadn't made much of an impression. In this universe, she'd stumbled across a few of her columns in the _Prophet_ over the course of last year, and been vaguely amused by them.

For all her aesthetic eccentricities, and her sickeningly smug prose, Skeeter was _dangerous_. There had always been people of her ilk, for as long as mass-produced journals had existed in any society anywhere. People who would scent out blood in the water, tracking down scandal and controversy, and tear the figures involved apart for public amusement — thriving in the thrill of striking at someone wealthier and more powerful than themselves, basking in the adulation of the blood-thirsty masses. For the most part, Skeeter sustained herself off of celebrity gossip and the slow drip of corruption always leaking from the Ministry and the Wizengamot, but she took targets of opportunity whenever she could, feeding on each scandal that came along like some kind of embarrassingly gaudy vampire.

People like Skeeter were dangerous, but they were also useful — Cissy had chosen to do that interview with Skeeter for a reason. Apparently, she'd been leaking stories to Skeeter for over a decade now, the steady offerings of red meat, and the occasional more legitimate offering like that interview, kept her coming back for more, kept Skeeter from targeting Cissy herself. Skeeter was essentially supporting their fragile alliance in the Wizengamot now, the greatest of her vitriol focused on the Light, and _especially_ Ars Brittania.

As volatile of allies as people like Skeeter could be, it wasn't actually that difficult to keep their loyalty. You just had to keep them well-fed.

So when Skeeter got up to her feet — recogniseable at a glance, with the cherry-red frames of her spectacles, her clothes in bright colours with _rhinestones_ dotted here and there (_such_ a muggleborn, honestly) — Lyra just knew this was going to be good. And she wasn't disappointed. Her face stretched into a toothy (blood-thirsty) grin, Skeeter addressed Harry, but her eyes were actually on Dumbledore, watching him for a reaction. "As you might know, Mister Potter, the Wizengamot voted only this weekend to expel Albus Dumbledore as Chief Warlock — the result of a long sequence of events set off by the...confusion around your early departure from Hogwarts at the beginning of the summer." Well, _that_ was a politic way to put it. "I was wondering what your feelings on that were, perhaps."

Harry didn't really have an answer, beyond exasperation that the entire bloody country lost their fucking minds over him for no good reason — providing in the process a pretty clear picture of just how he felt about his fame in Britain, which Lyra was certain was _more_ than enough for Skeeter to write an absolutely _scathing_ article right there. (Lyra would put money on Skeeter somehow using Harry to accuse the entire Light of fucking over his childhood for political gain, tapping into the public adoration of him that already existed to throw fuel on the fire, it was going to be beautiful.) But he didn't _need_ to have an answer. The question wasn't really for him.

Lyra wasn't certain whether Skeeter _actually_ wanted to get a reaction from Dumbledore to expound upon in her column, or if she were just taking the opportunity to twist the knife in his gut a bit. Either way, it was bloody hilarious.

Compared to Harry and Krum, Lyra didn't get much attention, though more than the other three. She did get a question about how she'd gotten across the age line, which, that should be obvious, she'd already said she'd been born in 1950, how did they _think_ she'd gotten across the age line? She was pretty sure most of them thought she was still fucking with them, that in true travelling cursebreaker fashion she simply wasn't willing to give away the game, but Luna _definitely_ believed her. And then there was a bit about the World Cup, how she felt about being one of the youngest people (though not quite _the_ youngest) ever to be accepted into the Order of Merlin — mostly, baffled the Wizengamot was really going to reward her for doing something so _insanely dangerous_, which at least got a round of laughter from the audience. She wasn't _trying_ to be funny, but she'd take it.

Lyra's most entertaining question was, again, from Skeeter. "There are rumours spreading among certain parties, Miss Black, that you spend quite a lot of your time out in the forest with _wilderfolk_. Is there any truth to that?"

For a second, Lyra wondered why Skeeter was asking that particular question — after all, Lyra was one of her patrons (if indirectly), creating a scandal with Lyra at its centre wasn't in her best interest. Perhaps she expected Lyra to simply deny it. Perhaps she thought Lyra would think the scandal entertaining, and complimentary to her political interests. Which it would be, and it was.

Oh, wait, this was actually _way_ better than Lyra'd thought. If she played this right, she could actually get _two_ entertaining scandals for the price of one. Now which order did these shocking revelations go in...?

Meeting the muggleborn muckraker's smile with a toothy smirk, Lyra said, "No, that one's true. I've been meeting with Sylvie for, oh, over a year now, must be."

Skeeter blinked for a second, enough to cue to Lyra that she'd assumed that rumour was actually false. "I see. This Sylvie, she is..."

"Sylvia's a wolf. Well, she's a wolf _most_ of the time, but her English is actually pretty good — she finds humans fascinating, you see, we met in the first place because she wants to learn more about us. She's almost at a point I think we can visit Hogsmeade soon, so she can see how the other half lives." Lyra was actually considering taking her to the Yule Ball, just for how much it would freak people out, but that would take a bit of work yet. She _definitely_ wouldn't pass for human, and she'd probably refuse to wear shoes at all, so, should be fun. "Oh, and we're lovers, you know."

Lyra bit her lip to hold in a laugh at the wide-eyes stares and shocked gasps that got. Even in less fiercely humanocentric magical societies than Britain, people still thought wilderfolk were weird. Certainly not the kind of people teenagers, _especially_ noble girls, should publicly admit to shagging.

Which was exactly why she was publicly admitting it, of course.

Nobody quite seemed to know how to move on from that, a lot of furious scribbling and muttering going on, so Lyra decided to take the next step herself. "Not that that was really my intention starting out, it just sort of..._happened_, you know. We'd just gotten out of a _really_ nasty fight with some acromantulae and, well, you know how that can be."

"Excuse me, Miss Black," a reporter said, standing — the bloke from the _Herald_, Lyra was pretty sure. "_Acromantulae_? Are there _acromantulae_ in the Forest?"

"Oh, yes, a pretty sizeable colony of them. The wilderfolk and the centaurs have been trying to fight them off for...well, I'm not certain how long — the wilderfolk don't exactly keep a calendar the way we do, they often aren't great at reckoning spans of time longer than a few years. A generation or two at least, I think. I'm told their tribes have been reduced quite a bit from attrition — acromantulae reproduce _much_ more quickly than wilderfolk and centaurs, you know, even if they come out with lesser casualties in most battles they'll still lose by inches. So far, they've managed to keep the acromantulae relatively contained deep in the Forest, but they've been slowly losing ground for years, who knows when we might have started seeing giant talking spiders around the school.

"It probably won't be a problem anymore, though — with Professor Lovegood and myself helping out over the last months, we've done some serious damage to the colony. At the very least, we'll be giving the wilderfolk and centaurs time to recover. So, there's that."

And for a few minutes after that, their little press event devolved entirely into confirming there actually was an acromantula colony in the Forest, why the _fuck_ there was an _acromantula colony_ outside of _a school_, and what exactly was to be done about that. That last question was actually answered by Cassie, who stood up to say, yes, she was working with Lyra and the wilderfolk to fight the things, and that she wouldn't be leaving the country until the acromantulae were entirely exterminated — she was less clear on what the timeline for that would be, probably a year or two. (Which meant Lyra might have to find something else to do with the hours everyone else is asleep as early as next year, but she'd already accepted weeks ago that sharing her spiders with _Cassie bloody Lovegood_ meant the inevitable extermination of the colony. It was slightly disappointing, but she'd figure something out.) Getting confirmation from both Cassie _and_ Harry that the acromantulae really were out there got their guests even _more_ keyed up.

Harry performed admirably, relating in broad strokes his own harrowing experience with them back in the spring of '93, brought right into the heart of the colony before _barely_ managing to escape, due mostly to Harry's excellent luck in life-or-death situations. (Some of these stories he had were just improbable, Lyra definitely believed Kore had been keeping an eye on the little idiot, he'd be dead twenty times over otherwise.) One journalist from a foreign paper _struck gold_ when, asking why the hell a pair of twelve-year-olds were tracking down acromantulae in the first place, Harry, in what _had_ to be a moment of innocent thoughtlessness, admitted he'd done it at Hagrid's suggestion.

Which made it very clear that, not only did Hagrid know the acromantulae were in the Forest, and had not seen fit to inform the authorities, but he also thought nothing of pointing students in the direction of giant, intelligent, man-eating spiders. Lyra helpfully pointed out that Dumbledore almost certainly knew of this particular incident — and he'd promoted Hagrid to Professor of Care of Magical Creatures a few months _later_.

(Lyra was aware Hagrid was kind of being thrown in the path of a rampaging dragon here, and she _did_ like Hagrid — his Care classes continued to be consistently entertaining, and he was one of the few mages in the castle who actually gave a shite about other magical beings at all. She hoped pointing the finger at Dumbledore would at least take some of the heat off Hagrid, it was really the best she could do.)

Dumbledore, stupidly (or possibly to further her attempt to deflect scrutiny from Hagrid), did not deny that he'd known about his gamekeeper pointing two twelve-year-olds at an acromantulae nest when he'd promoted him. If he _had_ done that on purpose, Lyra thought she might actually admire it — sacrificing one's own political capital to protect a client was kind of a stupidly honourable thing to do...but she was betting he was just being an idiot.

The Queen had been getting whispers from her guards for a couple minutes, probably having explained to her exactly what all these magical beings were and what the inevitable consequence of the acromantulae successfully taking over the Forest would be. (They would keep spreading if they weren't stopped, eventually the Ministry would be forced to exterminate them, even if it took years and dozens of lives lost, lest they spill out into the countryside and start hunting muggles.) When Vicky stood up, Lyra half-expected her to ask something along the lines of how the acromantulae colony came to exist in the first place — supposedly, Hagrid was directly responsible for that too, thankfully Harry hadn't mentioned that, she'd rather Hagrid not be sentenced to life in Azkaban. You know, something relatively small-scale.

Instead, the Queen explained that allowing an infestation of such dangerous foreign magical creatures as acromantulae to develop would inevitably lead to _her_ people being threatened — perhaps killed by the hundreds, if the Ministry didn't act soon enough to contain them. So, instead of something small, she asked if Dumbledore was aware that, in failing to act in his capacity as Chief Warlock to deal with this threat, he had been violating the terms of the Wizengamot's treaties with the United Kingdom, and also potentially endangering the Statute of Secrecy.

Solid. Fucking. _Gold_.

(Clearly, inviting extra people to the Tournament had been an _excellent_ idea.)


	39. Hogwarts 15 — The General, The Thief

"Black. Potter. What are you doing here?" Snape asked, sounding thoroughly annoyed at the interruption...of two students who really _should_ have been there, it wasn't as though they were doing anything particularly offensive. They _had_ been excused for the Wand Weighing, but it wasn't as though they were _required_ to skive off if they'd gotten done earlier than expected.

Hermione was slightly surprised, honestly — she'd understood there were supposed to be interviews for various news outlets, and while _Harry_ might skip out on those as early as possible, _Lyra_ she would expect to thoroughly enjoy the opportunity to convince the poor reporters to publish the most outlandish lies (or worse, _truths_) she could come up with to explain where she'd come from, where she'd learned her improbably large range of magical skills, why she'd suddenly appeared in Britain last summer, and how she'd managed to enter herself in the Tournament in the first place.

"Well, you see, Your Honour, we simply couldn't let a Tuesday pass without spending at least some few minutes in your gracious company."

There were a few suppressed sniggers from both sides of the room. The professor glowered at Lyra even more heavily. "Given that your ever-so-crucial publicity event has taken the majority of the class period, and thus even had you any hope of completing today's assignment without having attended to the instructions — which, in all fairness, would be nothing unusual for the two of _you_ — you simply haven't time to do so, and I suspect that your only purpose here today is to disrupt your fellow students' learning, you may go. _Now_."

Hermione stifled a snort of amusement. She had to admit, she did like Snape a bit better knowing that was how he spoke to students he _liked_. He was still an enormous arse, and really one of the _worst_ teachers she'd _ever_ had, but maybe not _quite_ as much of a bully as she'd thought before Lyra joined their class.

Lyra gave Snape an entirely unconcerned little _hum_. "If disrupting the lesson is the goal, you're doing all the work for me, Your Honour. _I_ only wanted to distract _two _students — you were the one who thought we needed to make a big production out of our arriving late and distract _everyone_."

"_Lyra!"_ Harry hissed, glaring at her.

She ignored him, and Snape's scowl of exasperated annoyance, dragging a stool from the empty table which would have been Harry and Blaise's, if Blaise hadn't moved over here to work with her instead, and plopping down beside them. The professor decided to ignore her right back, instead ordering the class to bottle whatever poisonous concoctions they intended to present as an antidote to doxie venom — because of course he couldn't remind them that the period was almost over _more civilly_.

"Hey," Blaise said, sealing his sample with a quick charm and vanishing the rest of his cauldron. (Potions was so _wasteful_...though she didn't imagine they'd ever need _that much_ doxie antivenin, so— _Whatever_.)

"So, do you two have plans after class?"

"What?" Hermione said distractedly, filling her own vial with fizzy, red-orange liquid. It was slightly more _orange_ than the textbook described, but she was _sure_ she'd followed Snape's instructions precisely... "You _know_ we have Arithmancy next..." She and Blaise did, anyway, neither Lyra nor Harry were taking that particular class. Lyra, of course, clearly didn't _need_ to — not that she _actually_ needed to be at Hogwarts at all, at least as far as classwork was concerned (it was both absurd and somewhat annoying how little attention she paid to their lessons) — and though Hermione thought Harry might actually be _good_ at maths — Professor McGonagall occasionally asked them to practise balancing the energies in transformation equations as part of their homework, and those were obviously the easiest assignments for him — he claimed to have no interest in quantifying magic or modeling spells, when he could just cast them and figure out how to tweak them through trial and error. (As though that was actually _a thing people did_, and not ridiculously difficult, not to mention _dangerous_...)

"Skip it, this is more important."

"_What?_ Lyra, I can't just _skip Arithmancy_! We've just started modeling probabilities!" If it were, oh, she didn't know..._Herbology_, maybe, but—

"The probability of a single missed lesson affecting your understanding of the subject is approximately nil." Well, that _was_ true, but Professor Vector often included more real-world examples in her lectures than Hermione would find in their book, and probability modeling was one of those topics that really required a more _nuanced_ understanding than she thought she might get just talking to Lyra about it... "Skip it."

"Why, exactly, are you asking us to risk the wrath of an annoyed Septima Vector?" Blaise drawled.

"The pride and reputation of our illustrious institution is at stake, _apparently_," Harry informed them. "Mira just reminded us that we need to finish putting together a team for the first task, so..."

"Ah. That." Blaise plucked her labeled sample from her hand, went to turn them in, apparently _completely unsurprised_. Though, honestly, Hermione couldn't quite say how _she_ was surprised — Lyra never took deadlines seriously, and Harry could be absurdly absent-minded about even the most important things. The fact that he'd been walking around with a goofy _Gabbie likes me_ smile for the past two days probably didn't help. (She _knew_ that was what that smile was, despite Harry not saying so, because _Gabrielle_ had been chattering about how serendipitous it was meeting Harry, because _he_ was a mind mage and _Blaise_ was a mind mage, and threesomes were _great_, and that was pretty much where Hermione stopped listening.)

(Sometimes Hermione really wished Gabrielle would just shut up.)

"Are you telling me you haven't even— The task is in _four days!"_ _Three_, really, since it was going to start at nine in the morning on Saturday and it was already _Tuesday afternoon_!

"So, is that a yes, you'll help?"

Hermione groaned. "Of course I will, just— How many people have you recruited so far?"

"Well, you make one," Harry said, far too calmly to understand how difficult it was going to be to not only _put together_ a team for _any_ sort of serious contest in the next _three days_ — even just _recruiting _people, what if they wanted time to think about it? — but design a strategy, practise the spells they'd need to know— Hermione didn't even know who the top duelists in the school _were_, and— "Assuming you're—"

"What?! No! If she's on our team for this, she can't be on my team for Edinburgh!"

Harry gave her girlfriend perhaps the most _scornful_ look Hermione had ever seen on him. "If she's not on our team for _this_, _we're_ going to have to organise things! Maïa is clever and devious and methodical and we need her help if we're going to not get our arses kicked on Saturday!"

Hermione was certain Harry had intended that as a compliment, and she didn't..._not_ take it as one. She just kind of wished it didn't make her sound so... Well. She didn't know, exactly.

"But—"

"_Please_ say yes, Hermione?"

"Well, _yes_, of course I will, I just wish you wouldn't _put things off_ like this..." She sighed heavily. She'd just have to go to Professor Vector's office hours tomorrow and explain the situation... "Just— Here, help us pack up our things, and we can go hash this out in the Library."

፠

"_Circe's tits, Maïa, I didn't _completely forget about _this, I've been waiting until we knew what the other teams were going to look like before we put ours together. Plus, I just found out what exactly we're doing yesterday."_

"_What _are _we doing?" Harry asked, rather warily._

"_Capture the Crown, which is good for us. The other schools have put together teams that seem to be favouring offence, and they have a _lot _more serious duelists, they'd crush us in Capture the Castle."_

"_Is that like a capture-the-flag type thing?" Harry asked. _

"_Puzzle rings, usually," Blaise explained, "or jewels that you have to set into a crown — not flags, but yes."_

_Hermione frowned at him. "Is there a difference?"_

"_Kind of. The win condition is more specific than just grabbing the flag. There's usually a puzzle or something that you have to solve before you can win. The crown version, the jewels and the crown itself are usually kept in warded boxes or whatever; puzzle rings, you have to figure out how they fit together to form the crown. You don't win until your king's wearing it," he explained. _

"_You designate your king and the order of succession at the beginning of the game," Lyra added. "If they're still conscious, they specifically have to have the crown to win, so a lot of the time, if you can't capture the crown you capture the other person's _king_, give yourself time to take it back. If they want to make it really difficult, the king will have to be in a certain place in order to be crowned, like in a 'castle' area or safe in your own base."_

"_So, we may need to get this 'crown' as well as whatever the other two teams are protecting, and protect our own flag or jewel or whatever, and a particular person, and possibly take and hold a certain spot against the other teams? With _fifteen people_." _

"_It's not as hard as you're making it sound, Maïa. They're only going to have fifteen people on their teams too, and they'll have all the same priorities. At least, I don't _think _they'd give us unbalanced conditions..."_

"_No," Blaise agreed. "The spirit of the Tournament is that you're all on level ground to start. The tasks and judges can't be biased toward one school or another, so I think you have to have the same challenges."_

"_Right, so, the standard strategy is to keep your king and your piece of the crown in the same place to make it easier to protect them. We'll need some people to do that, and another team to go after the objectives—"_

"_And we're _sure _this is the game? Where did you—?"_

"_I asked Nyberg."_

"_And he just _told you_? You don't think he might've _lied_, you know, for Durmstrang?" Harry asked._

"_No, I bribed him with an analysis of Cursebreaker Weasley's elemental sunlight bounce ward, to be delivered _if _his information turns out to be good. The layout of the field suggests it is — no obvious 'castle' to capture and hold. We're using flags. All three have to be assembled to retrieve the crown from a pocket dimension. One of those overlapping rune-scheme laminate-fusion circles." All three of them stared at her in complete incomprehension. "They were popular in Eastern Europe in the Eighteen-Eighties?" She gave them an exasperated sigh. "You literally just lay the three pieces of cloth on top of each other and reach through them to retrieve the crown. It's got to be pretty obvious, unless they're planning on letting us all know how it works somehow — I doubt most of the other students have heard of them, either. Anyway, flags. And the other schools seem to be going heavy on offence. Word is Durmstrang and Beauxbatons have made an alliance of sorts, agreeing to take us out first, knock out the interfering children before dealing with each other."_

_Hermione frowned. "And they're definitely going to have more experienced mages on their teams, we probably won't be able to face them directly, so...I think we're going to need to be sneaky."_

"_My thoughts exactly. So, Blaise: who's the sneakiest person you know?"_

፠

_Who's the sneakiest person I know?_

Well, Lyra was pretty sneaky herself, Blaise was pretty sure she had gotten _most_ of her information on the other schools' plans by spying on them from the Shadows, but the first person who actually came to mind was Tori — Daphne's younger sister, and therefore the closest thing Blaise had had to an actual sibling until Lyra had come along. She had a sort of tendency to...fade into the background. Not that she was _quiet_, exactly. _Daphne_ was quiet, with her tendency to observe others, let them do the talking. Tori, when she was at home, surrounded by people she'd known all her life, was outgoing and animated, and she _definitely_ had no problem speaking her mind. Around people she _didn't_ know, though, she was...shy.

_Shy_ in this case meaning that she'd figured out how to cast a freeform attention-deflecting field when she was about seven — accidental magic, a response to Lady Greengrass attempting to bring her to a tea party with her peers for the first time — and just...never stopped using it. Which made sense, he guessed, most kids' accidental magic tended to be basic physical charm effects, or if they were more powerful, like Harry, transfiguration. There wasn't really much reason to keep intentionally doing freeform spells that you could cast more precisely and at a greater distance with a wand. Most people got out of the habit and kind of forgot how — if they even did 'accidental' magic on purpose in the first place, a lot of kids didn't, or overthought it and so couldn't do it reliably.

But Avoidance Charms weren't exactly the sort of thing Hogwarts taught first-years, so it kind of made sense that she'd kept doing it — even more so because she'd suddenly been thrown into interacting with loads of strangers who were themselves kind of strange, by the standards of the Greenwood. (Their village was practically a different world, and Tori hadn't exactly spent a lot of time outside of it before coming to school.) And where Daphne would fall back on the training she'd been given to interact with outsiders, giving that interaction her best shot and often making a stiff and overly-formal first impression (overcompensating, Blaise had told her more than once, but she'd rather be thought of as an Ice Princess than a jumped-up Mister), Tori preferred to wait and watch — _not_ interact with them until she had some idea of how they would react to _her_ and could tune her performance accordingly. Which meant Tori tended to be much better at fitting in than Daph, she just needed more time to assess the situation.

(Most people tended not to have much of a first impression of her at all, it was weird. Cool, but weird.)

She'd managed to find her feet eventually, of course, made friends in Slytherin and at least stopped diverting most people's attention from her all the time, but she'd kind of had a lot of trouble her first year with the _professors_ not realising she was even in class and constantly taking points for it.

Anyway, Blaise was absolutely certain she still knew how to do it, and Daphne had spent a solid chunk of the summer teaching her the Sneaking Spells Snape had taught all of _them_ last year, "for emergency purposes" — _i.e._, so he knew which concealment spells they were most likely to be using and could keep an eye out for them trying to spy on him or otherwise get away with shite — and helping her get a head-start on the illusions and glamours she'd be doing in Charms this year. (Blaise hadn't been even a _little_ surprised to hear that Tori was a natural at Glamoury.)

So basically, if Tori didn't want to be seen, she wouldn't be. She also wouldn't be caught out with mind magic — she wasn't great at keeping Blaise _out_, but she _was_ good at using occlumency to hide her mental and magical presence, pulling herself _in_ and putting up a sort of breakwater to weakly divert the currents of ambient magic around herself. (It was really bloody annoying, actually. Again, kind of cool, but annoying.) She said this was the same thing she did with _being seen_, though she couldn't actually describe _how_ she did it.

Of course, she also said that it was harder to do with mind magic than with people's attention in general, so she usually didn't bother unless she was trying to spy on Blaise and Harry (nosey little Parker). She _claimed_ she didn't do this very often, because Blaise and Harry were kind of boring, and the trip-line ward Blaise had put on his room still alerted him when she tried to sneak in anyway. They could also pick her out with detection charms, but he kind of doubted anyone was going to just be throwing detection spells around their own base camps, so he was sure she'd be fine.

She wasn't making any efforts to hide herself when he tracked her down, just leaving Defence, which made it the easiest thing in the world to slip a thought into the front of her mind. _Tori! Ditch the Rosiers, I need to talk to you_.

"Hey, you two go ahead, I'm meeting someone."

"Oh?" Amanda asked, smirking at the shorter girl.

"A _special_ someone?" her twin suggested on Tori's other side.

"Oh, yeah, he's special all right," she said, rolling her eyes at the pair of them and their insinuating tone. "There are probably all sorts of innuendos I could make about _riding_ him, but..."

The Rosiers giggled. Carina, the shorter, darker-haired of the two (unlike the Weasleys, they weren't identical), poked Tori in the side, making her yelp. "You have _got_ to stop talking about trying to tame that bloody unicorn like he's a person."

"He _is_ a person! You just don't know him like I do!" She performed the protest overly dramatically, Blaise got the impression she was quoting or mocking some terrible novel, not that he cared enough to hunt down which one.

"Yeah, because you're a crazy person." "We don't know what they told you in the Greenwood, but" "people don't _actually_ ride unicorns, Tori." "Professor Lovegood is totally having us on."

"She's not, and _some_ people can. You just have to be more pure of heart than you dirty-minded hags."

"Uh-_huh_."

"Yeah, right."

"Whatever, if Daph asks, I'll be out in the Woods." She skipped off down a cross-corridor without giving the twins a chance to respond, ducking into a classroom to wait for Blaise to catch up as soon as she was out of their sight.

She was sitting on the professor's desk when he reached it, kicking her heels and grinning at the doorway. "What's up, Blaise?"

"Are you really trying to ride unicorns?"

She giggled. "No, of course not, that would be silly, and probably really dangerous. I would _never_..."

"You know, I don't need legilimency to know when you're lying."

Shrug. "Believe me or don't, I don't care. What did you want to talk to me about?"

_Ah, that. Well_—

She frowned at him. _Why are we doing the mind-reading thing?_

_Because this is a secret, and I don't care to cast half a dozen privacy palings at the moment. This is _far _more secure than actually _talking_. _

_Oh. Fine. Carry on. _

_Well, I'm here to offer you a very important mission. If you should choose to accept it, you must conduct yourself with the utmost secrecy, and_—

_Now _you're _the one being silly!_

_Maybe a little. Want to help Team Hogwarts win the Triwizard Tournament? Maïa and Lyra have a plan, but it calls for a sneak-thief of the _highest _calibre..._

Her eyes lit up as she bit her lip to stop herself responding aloud. _You have my attention..._

Blaise grinned. She was _definitely_ in.

* * *

_So, the original idea here was to write an Ocean's Eleven-style recruitment scene, showcasing each of the people they're recruiting for the team, but of course it ended up being far too long to post as a single chapter. So this is part 1 of 7, more to be posted every couple of days. —Leigha_


	40. Hogwarts 15 — The Knight, The Spies

"_Okay, so Astoria's going to be sneaking around collecting flags, but we'll need a few more obvious people going after them too, so it doesn't look suspicious."_

"_Yep. Offensive squad. Dibs."_

_Harry let out a little scoff. "Not like I wanted to be on the front lines. I'd probably get myself stunned in about a minute. Though, actually, did Mira ever tell you if we could use brooms?"_

"_Harry, you're a fucking genius! Aerial support!"_

_The boy gave his fellow Champion an embarrassed shrug. "Yeah, well, I'm just thinking, if we _can _use a broom, I bet Krum's going to be in the air..."_

"_And I bet Ingrid is going to be leading a ground squad, and...probably Cæciné, for Beauxbatons."_

"_Really? You don't think they'd have Fleur...?" Hermione suggested. "I mean, she's older, and a veela, she's probably a stronger witch, right?"_

"_Ah, no. Unless the Cæcinés are drastically different from my home universe, which seems unlikely, given that I _just _met her mother and she's _clearly _a light battlemage, it's safe to assume Artèmisia is just as capable and qualified to be a Champion as I am."_

"_And Arte's a legilimens," Harry volunteered. "A pretty strong one, I think. So she'd have an advantage on the ground, be able to feel out where people are and what they're planning and stuff."_

"_So we need to make sure everyone on our side can do at least basic occlumency? Is that going to be a problem for Astoria?"_

"_Doubt it. I'm sure she knows occlumency, and I doubt they're going to leave an asset like a bloody _Cæciné _guarding their base, so she won't exactly be in a position to feel her lurking. And if I were Fleur... Strike team."_

_Hermione nodded. "Firewalk straight into the other teams' bases, end it before anyone has a chance to get at them? Then they probably wouldn't need much of a defensive side at all." _

_Lyra smirked. "That would be consistent with the intelligence I've gathered."_

"_So then, we go heavy on defence?" Harry asked, though he immediately continued working through the problem for himself. "I mean, we'd have to, if we're assuming they're going to flame in — massed spellfire is probably the only reasonable way to take her out before she gets our flag."_

_Hermione nodded, biting at her lip as she considered Harry's suggestion. "Right, so I'm thinking maybe Harry and two others in the air; Lyra, you and two others being very loud and obvious on offence; Astoria actually grabbing the flags; that leaves me and seven others for defence. Harry, you'd know who would be the best fliers..."_

"_Well I'd _like _to have Angelina and Alicia, they've been flying together _forever_, but neither of them are very good at occlumency. The Weasley twins?"_

_Lyra grimaced. "I actually have an idea about them, but it's going to require one of them on the ground with Maïa, so no."_

_Harry gave her a suspicious, side-long glance. "Ah... Maybe Diggory? I've never really flown with Gin — or against her, for that matter — but she might be good, too."_

"_No, all the tactics she's been practising with Theo and Sirius are ground-based. Diggory's a pretty conventional flier, right?"_

_Harry nodded. "But I know he's got some experience casting in the air. Captains have to do monitoring charms and timers and stuff in practice."_

"_Okay, so ask him first and see if he has any suggestions, since you two will both have to coordinate with whoever else," Hermione ordered. "Lyra, what exactly were you planning with the twins?"_

፠

The fact that they weren't doing Quidditch this year didn't mean that the Hufflepuff quidditch team weren't practising. They were _Hufflepuffs_, Diggory had said when Angie asked him about it, as though that should explain everything. Which, it _kind of_ did, Harry guessed. They didn't want to get out of practice, so they were just going to...keep practising.

Smart, Harry thought, and he was sure Oliver would've he'd graduated last year, McGonagall hadn't actually chosen a new Captain yet, none of the girls seemed to care much about running keeper trials, the twins were actually really pleased they had all those hours free now to work on their joke products — they were _really_ serious about starting a shop right out of school — and Harry was the most junior member of the team. He couldn't exactly get a whole practice team together _by himself_. And he didn't really have a lot of free time now anyway, what with getting dragged into this stupid tournament, but they hadn't _known_ that the whole _two months_ of September and October, so that was beside the point, as far as he was concerned.

He'd been really upset at first, when they'd been told that there wasn't going to be inter-House Quidditch this year — he loved flying, it really, really sucked not to have an excuse to spend fifteen hours a week in the air (and he couldn't really justify spending that much time flying just for fun) — but after he'd had a while to think about it, he'd decided that it was a good thing for Gryffindor. Or, it _would_ be, if any of his teammates actually wanted to practise. Keeper was an important position! It could be _great_ to have a whole extra year to train a new one! But no one seemed to care what _Harry_ thought about it. Bloody stupid. The _Slytherins_ were still practising too, because _they_ didn't want to lose their first match next year. At this rate, Gryffindor were going to have to try to pull together a half-decent showing after a _whole year_ of _not doing shite_, _and_ a new keeper on top...

Anyway, the Hufflepuffs weren't all too busy with their own shite to find time to practise, so it wasn't entirely surprising, when he asked Justin if he'd seen the overly-ernest sixth-year prefect around, that he was apparently out on the Pitch. Which was fine with Harry, he could use some fresh air and time away from the Castle. He floated up to the top tier of the stands just as the Puffs were wrapping up for the afternoon. Perfect timing.

And Diggory wasn't a seeker for nothing. He was a solid flier, bigger than most seekers, but from what Harry had seen, flying against him and watching Hufflepuff's matches against Slytherin and Ravenclaw, he had great reflexes, and they tended to fly a similar style. It shouldn't be too difficult to work together. And he was observant, that was probably more important than anything else — one of the things that had become clear _very_ early on when he started messing around with Justin's 'study group' was that a good sense of timing and awareness for where your opponents' spells were was probably even more important to winning a fight than actually being able to hit your own targets. After all, being entirely unable to aim did give one the advantage of unpredictability (_Justin_).

Diggory noticed Harry land even as the rest of them were heading to the ground. Instead of following them he came up to say hello without Harry even having to wave, because Hufflepuff. "Potter. How's it going?"

"Diggory. You lot are looking good. Wish I'd been able to get my team out here."

"Tough luck. Maybe you can put together a pick-up team? Warrington was talking about maybe holding unofficial matches, Saturday afternoons."

"Really?" Harry felt himself perk up at the prospect. All the shite going on right now, he could _really_ use some time to just unwind, focus on something as un-stressful as Quidditch. "Yeah, I'll ask around, let you know. That's not really why I'm here, though."

"Oh? I figured you were just waiting until we were done to run drills or something."

"Ah, no, I actually wanted to talk to you about something."

Diggory snorted. "If this is about the Yule Ball..."

"_What?!"_ He meant, Diggory _was_ a good-looking bloke, but...

"Sorry, kidding, I had three different conversations that started that way already today. Like people _don't know_ Cho and I are together, or something." If they didn't, Harry thought this was perfectly fair — _he_ hadn't known the Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw seekers were dating, and Blaise _did_ keep him informed about that sort of gossipy nonsense, so. "Never mind. What is it?"

"Er... You know about the first task? For the Tournament?"

"As much as most people, I guess. Some kind of war game out in the Forest, right?"

He nodded. "We're getting our team together, and I figure Krum's definitely going to be on a broom, so we should have some aerial support of our own, right? So—"

"Yes!"

Harry blinked, slightly taken aback.

Diggory looked almost as taken aback by his reaction. "Er. You _were_ going to ask whether I wanted to be on your team, right?"

"Um, yeah..."

"Oh, good!" He sounded rather relieved. "Would've been embarrassing if you weren't, wouldn't it? I mean, it's kind of short notice, but yes, of course I'm in. It's the bloody Triwizard Tournament, Potter! You can't have _possibly_ thought I would say _no_." Well, no, he hadn't, really. "Who else is with us?"

"Well, we figured the best strategy for us is a strong defence — Lyra heard the other teams are going heavy on offence, and they're planning to team up and knock us out, first. So we're going to have three people in the air, and she'll be taking two others on offence to tie up their best duelists. And nine on the ground guarding our base."

The Hufflepuff captain nodded, slightly sobered by the idea that it was just going to be the two of them and one other person against Krum — _combat transfiguration_ sounded rather intimidating, on top of the whole _flying against Victor bloody Krum_ part — and however many people _he_ had, _and_ Beauxbatons. If they weren't completely stupid, they'd have at least a few people in the air too. "So, who else is going to be in the air?"

"Ah, well, about that..." Harry began, running his fingers through his hair, just for something to do with his hands. "I don't know, yet." Diggory gave him a _look_. A rather _reproachful_ look. "Yes, I know it's last minute, Hermione already told us off for that — she'll be leading the ground defence, by the way. Blame Lyra, it's what I do. Anyway. We still need to find a third person to fly with us. So, any ideas?"

፠

"Are you sure they're here?" Maïa asked, giving the mirror Lyra had led her to a rather dubious look.

"No, but Peeves said this is their main work-space. Come on, you have to make faces, or it won't let you in."

"I feel like a bloody idiot, Lyra," she complained, but crossed her eyes and stuck out her tongue anyway.

Lyra twisted her own face into a bug-eyed parody of ecstasy, followed by her best impression of Cissy's spawn being terrified of her, or riots, or Professor Nyberg (who had apparently turned him into a ferret, which was hilarious). After a moment of biting its lip trying not to laugh, Maïa's 'reflection' broke into helpless giggles. Her own just kind of smirked at her like, _is that the best you can do?_

She pouted at it like five-year-old Meda denied a second biscuit, wobbly lower lip and all. "I'm fucking hilarious, and you know it." The image in the mirror rolled 'her' eyes, but it did step aside and let them pass.

From the opposite side, the 'mirror' was an empty frame, looking out on the corridor with no obstruction to speak of, which was really very useful if one was trying to sneak back into the school after an illicit trip off the grounds, but also meant the Twins weren't the least bit surprised to see her turn up in their little hideaway.

"Boys," she said casually, taking in their setup — a warded set of shelves full of potions ingredients, a couple of tables covered with notes, maybe a dozen various cupboards and trunks which Lyra presumed contained finished or in-progress projects, and a surprisingly comprehensive collection of brewing implements arrayed across a pair of workbenches obviously stolen from one of the old Potions labs that no one used anymore. (If she'd had to guess, she'd say that was where most of their equipment came from too — it wasn't out of the question Sirius had given them enough investment capital to buy all this shite, but none of it looked _new_.) These were enclosed in a simple but well-executed protective circle, to keep any external magic from interfering with their brewing and any noxious fumes or minor explosions _in_. The real potions labs had those enchantments worked into the structural wards, but since no one made any effort not to bring spelled shite in, or dismiss their glamours and hairstyling charms and shite before they came in, and Sev avoided giving them any assignments that even _Neville_ could turn into a poison-bomb, they barely mattered.

There was a _much_ more heavily warded space a bit further into the tunnel, presumably intended to test anything that might, say, _cause major structural damage_ if it went wrong, presumably enchanted _after_ whatever accident had resulted in the tunnel collapsing about twenty metres beyond the boundary of the enchantments that protected the Castle itself from idiot students trying to blow it up. (Sirius had been _very_ annoyed to discover that his favourite passage to Hogsmeade had been ruined. And even _more_ annoyed that no one had bothered to _fix_ it.)

"Lyra," "Maïa." "What brings you two to our humble workshop?" "And how did you find us?"

"Peeves told me. Though I guess Snape probably could've done, too," she noted, pointedly raising an eyebrow at the circle surrounding their little makeshift laboratory set-up.

"Snape doesn't know about this lab," "we just don't want him to kill us if he finds out about it." "If we take proper precautions," "he can't really complain about us brewing unsupervised."

"Like that would stop him?"

"What're you working on?" Maïa asked, drifting toward one of the note-covered tables.

"Sorry, Granger," one of the boys said firmly, as the other banished the loose pages and scrolls into a nearby trunk with a flourish. "That's proprietary information." "Besides, we asked first:" "what are you doing here?"

Maïa gave a small huff. "We're here to recruit you for the war game event on Saturday."

The boys grinned at each other. "Decoy detonators!" "Disillusionment hats!" "Canary landmines!" "Engorgement grenades!" "We're in!" "We're _so_ in!"

"No, unfortunately," Lyra said firmly. "Not to rain all over your pratfall parade, but I'm pretty sure we can only bring in our primary and secondary foci. No enchantments or potions prepared ahead of time."

Their twin grins collapsed. "Oh." "Well." "Why're you asking _us_ then?" "We mean, we're not bad casters," "but openly hexing people" "isn't really our game."

"Honestly, I don't know," Maïa admitted, fixing a rather annoyed glare on Lyra. "Lyra wanted it to be a surprise."

She grinned, almost too delighted with this idea to get the words out without breaking into maniacal cackling. "So, one of the major problems with a war game like this is a lack of intelligence on the movements of other groups, right?"

"Yes...?" "And...?"

"But we're going to have a small army of house elves out there with omnioculars, linked enchantments projecting the action for spectators, in real time."

"Well, _yes_, but that doesn't help _us_," Maïa said, frowning sharply. "Does it?"

"Ah, well, that depends. What's the range on that weird twin telepathy thing you two do all the time?" she asked.

As their delighted grins returned, she lost that battle against the maniacal cackling.


	41. Hogwarts 15 — The Kamikaze

"_Wait, you want to know who _I _would pick?" Cedric asked, sounding surprised. _

"_Well, yeah. I mean, you're going to have to fly with them, too and I don't really know anyone who has much experience with casting in the air. Just, they have to have decent occlumency, Beauxbatons has veela _and _a mind mage, not sure about Durmstrang."_

_The Hufflepuff Captain winced. "So I guess that rules Cho out, then. I almost want to say you should think about asking a pair of beaters instead of me and someone else — they'd be used to coordinating, you know?"_

"_Yeah, but the only beater team who both know any occlumency are the Weasley twins, and Lyra wants them for something else. Besides, I've flown against you. You're good, and our styles are pretty similar. I think we can make it work."_

_Cedric nodded absently, smiling slightly at the compliment. "Thanks. Oh! What if we _don't _try to coordinate styles, but bring in someone who can work around us?"_

"_Like a stunt flier? The only one I know is Lyra, and I don't think she's actually very good..."_

"_Have you met Enyo Seran?"_

፠

Harry had _not_ met Enyo Seran. He recognised her when they finally found her though, practising Suicide Dives near the opposite shore of the lake. She was a Slytherin, he saw her all the time down in the Dungeons, he'd just never really spoken to her. Well, the only reason he'd noticed her in the first place was because she'd once told off Parkinson for harassing him on his way down to Blaise's room, but other than that. She was a slender, willowy girl, at least a head taller than he was. She was also at least a year or two above him, and generally had a sort of _piss off_ vibe about her. She was a commoner, he thought, because Daphne and Tracey had pointed out all of the Nobles in Slytherin for him by now, but one who didn't give a single flying fuck about that political, social ranking shite, because, again, told off Parkinson.

He also kind of had the impression she was a serious, no-nonsense sort of person. Aside from her completely reasonable, sane-person disregard for the whole ridiculous wizarding nobility thing, her dark hair was always braided and pinned into a bun at the nape of her neck, and she wore healers' robes around Slytherin. (Lyra's penchant for wearing dueling-style clothes casually wasn't entirely unique, it was just weird that she wore them _everywhere _— a lot of the Slytherins who preferred trousers wore those or healers' robes when they were in private, throwing their uniform over-robes on whenever they had to go out into the rest of the school.) She was almost always in the Slytherin Common Room when he passed through it, and never seemed to just hang out talking to anyone. Every time Harry had noticed her, she'd been reading in an out-of-the-way corner. He didn't think he'd ever seen her smile, or even smirk maliciously at some idiot for being an idiot in her general vicinity, and her mental presence was similarly restrained.

That impression, he immediately decided, was _dead wrong_.

Suicide Dives were called that for a reason. Basically the idea was to start high enough that you would hit your broom's top speed before you hit the ground, and throw yourself into a death dive — within twenty degrees of straight _down_ — the closer to a vertical drop the better, from a technical perspective. And then when you were within a few metres of the ground, you pulled into a front flip. If you didn't break your neck smashing your face into the ground or kill your broom (and then yourself) by smashing the twigs before you could reverse your momentum, you ended the trick going straight _up_. Technically it only counted as a Suicide Dive if you came in within _five_ degrees of perpendicular, _and_ your twigs (or fletching, Seran was flying a stunt broom) dipped within a metre of the ground when you pulled out.

Seran's dives were absolutely _textbook_. He and Diggory watched her do two in quick succession, throwing in flip-turns at the top as well as at lake-level. The third time she came down, she cut it too close, had to corkscrew off at an angle because her momentum would've carried her into the water in the split-second it would have taken to pull back to vertical. She spiralled off into a generally upward course, standing on her stirrups, clinging with one hand to the nose of her broom, her free arm out to create drag, slow her down. Eventually she came to a hover just a few metres below them, and maybe twenty metres away. She turned to look up at them with a brilliant, elated grin. "Wanna try, Potter? I'll spot you."

"Um..." Well, he _kind of_ did, but he also didn't want to _die_ — and there was only so much a spotter could do, short of giving him an illusory ground target with plenty of room to stop if he overshot. He was pretty sure that was how professional stunt-fliers did it, in shows.

She laughed at his hesitation, relaxing to lie on her broom — stunt brooms weren't really intended for _sitting_ — floating toward them rather slowly, maintaining the thirty-degrees-off-vertical angle she'd ended up at, sort of as though leaning on an invisible wall. "Hey, Diggory. What's up?" she asked, inspecting the end of her braid, and _wringing water out of it_. (Her hair was longer than Harry had realised, the braid reached past her bum when she was just casually leaning there, but if she'd gotten it wet on that last run, that was still _way_ too close to face-smashing death for comfort.)

"Ah, well— Okay, I know you don't care, but I have to say it anyway: Suicide Dives?! What the _fuck_ Seran! Have you finally _actually_ lost your bloody mind?! You're going to kill yourself one of these days, you mad bloody danger-addict! Twenty points from Slytherin for reckless endangerment of a student's life! And if I catch you doing something that stupid again, I'm _definitely_ telling Professor Snape!"

"My birthday was in September, I'm allowed to do stupid shite now without Snape reading me the riot act. _Or_ you." She smirked at Diggory. "Got it out of your system, now?"

Diggory gave a loud, dramatic groan. "Yes. Mostly. Enyo Seran, this is Harry Potter, I'm sure you recognise him. Potter, this is Enyo Seran, sixth-year Slytherin. She's probably the best flier in the school, but she makes Black look like a bloody paragon of sanity."

Diggory clearly didn't know Lyra very well.

Seran just rolled her eyes at his dramatics. "Yeah, we've met." Kind of. "So, why are you two out here? Other than to offer entirely unwanted commentary on my Suicide Dives — which, in case you didn't notice, I was absolutely _killing_."

"Uh, yeah, I did notice," Harry muttered, trying not to sound too, well, _weird_, since the next thing he had to say was, "Um. So, I was wondering— That is, um— Well, first, I guess, do you have plans this Saturday?"

"You're a little young for me, Potter," she informed him drily.

"_What?_ God _damn_ it, why does everyone think— It's about the first task! We're looking for a third flier, you know, for aerial support, and wanted to know if you'd be interested."

She raised an eyebrow at him in that all-purpose expression all of the Slytherins seemed to have learned from Snape. "What? You just asked Diggory here who would be mad enough to get into an aerial battle with Victor Krum and half a dozen veela, and he gave you my name?"

Well, when she put it like _that_, it sounded a _hell_ of a lot more intimidating! "Well, if you don't want to, just _say_ so," Harry snapped.

Seran just laughed. "Oh, no, I'm definitely up for it. What are you thinking? You two run defence, I take offence?"

Oh. Shite. They needed _tactics_ now, and...stuff. Right. "Um, we haven't really talked about it, but...I guess that sounds fine to me? I mean, yes, that should work," he added more decisively, as he noticed that both of the sixth-years were looking at him with an expression he could only characterise as _doubtful_.

"_Right_," Seran drawled. "Your confidence and leadership are doing wonders for my morale, here, Potter."

Diggory snorted, turning her skeptical glare to himself. "Oh, come on, we both know you and team sport don't mix. Leadership my arse... You've seen Potter fly, he's a natural, and we've still got a few days, we'll figure it out."

"I hope you two didn't have any plans for the rest of the afternoon," the Slytherin said, every bit as serious as Harry had thought her, back before he'd seen her out here. "Because I don't know about _you_, but _I_ don't intend to go out there and _lose_ on Saturday."

"Yeah, well, that makes two of us," Harry snapped. _He_ didn't want to lose either, after all. He'd settle for not making a complete fool of himself, but..._yeah_.

"Three," Diggory said, grinning and shooting off to take a position over the lake. "What are you waiting for, Seran? Gimme your best shot!"


	42. Hogwarts 15 — The Conductor

"_So, we'll have the twins keeping me informed of our overall progress, but did you have anything in mind to keep _you _informed, and Harry? I mean, you did say that's one of the major problems with directing a campaign, right?"_

"_Well, yes, it is, but when did I...?"_

"_When we were talking about that game, _Autocrátores_. You said it actually takes time for your orders to reach field commanders. We need to have _some _way to communicate in the field..."_

"_The Aurors" "use little communication mirrors." "We could probably" "make something like that."_

_Lyra gave the boys a tiny frown. "Maybe, but we still can't bring in enchanted items or potions beyond our wands and a single secondary focus each."_

"_Well," "fine, then." "What about going the muggle route?" "Know anyone with a bugle?"_

"_That's it!"_

"_What's it?"_

"_You two are fucking brilliant!"_

"_Yes, obviously." "But we're with Maïa, here." "What's it?" _

"_Music! You know Ash Ryan?"_

"_Tetchy little Ravenclaw?" "Year above us?" "Pretty sure he plays the violin." "Is a war-fiddle a thing?" "Sounds a bit absurd..." "Not that there's anything wrong with _absurd_, but..."_

"_I have to say, Lyra, I think I agree with the boys, I can't exactly imagine trying to give the signal for a retreat or whatever with a violin..."_

"_No, not like a war-horn, with specific signals, but— What do you know about performative magic?" _

፠

Hermione knew very little about performative magic, truth be told. She'd come across references to it here and there, especially when she'd been researching magical creatures last year, trying to figure out _what_ Lyra was. (She still thought that her suspicion that her now girlfriend wasn't human had been an entirely reasonable one.) Apparently certain magical creatures — magical _beings_, she corrected herself — were known for using song and dance to cast spells.

"Like Sirens?" They were, she thought, the classic example.

Lyra shrugged, leading the four of them toward Ravenclaw. "Not _really_. Or rather, it's not _just_ Siren Song. Veela have a dancing thing that's kind of similar to that, actually, they did it at the World Cup. But blood magic is probably the big one you would've heard of humans using. Not like, blood alchemy or writing runes in blood...well, kind of like that, I guess, but the whole idea is that you're forging a connection between yourself and the object of the spell, through which it's effected. The oldest examples, at least with humans, use blood and sex. Modern performative magic, working on an emotional connection forged through artistic media, comes out of the sex-magic tradition — for reasons Zee could explain better than I can, I'm bloody terrible at it."

Somehow, Hermione didn't find that entirely surprising. Neither that Lyra was terrible at something based in emotion — possibly even _requiring empathy_ — nor that Lady Zabini was somewhat of an authority on sex magic. Not that she'd really spoken to Blaise's mother herself, but from what Harry and Lyra had told her she was a bit of a _femme fatale_. (The number of husbands she'd had suggested as much, if nothing else.)

"I'm pretty sure the weird veela sex magic thing is the same discipline, broadly speaking. Like _witchcraft_ or _wizardry_ broad, but. Most humans — European humans, there are a few different performative martial arts in Asia — don't think much of physical performative magic, either the up-close-and-personal kind or even dance. Well, they don't think it's worth their time to learn to _do_ dance magic, there _are_ dance troupes who use it in their performances to communicate the story of a ballet or whatever on a deeper level than _just_ dance. Not sure if there are any touring in Britain, but if you want to see we could go to a show in Aquitania or Venice," she offered.

Like...a date? Somehow it seemed odd, the idea of actually...doing something, like a planned excursion sort of something, on a date. Not that it _should_ seem odd, the idea of _going on an actual date_ with _her girlfriend_ — basically just dinner and a show (a ridiculously _fancy_ show, in another bloody country) — but...

Oh, she was being ridiculous. Lyra clearly hadn't meant it like that, she'd just kept babbling on about performative magic.

"Music is much more socially acceptable, because...reasons? Honestly, I don't get it. But I have it on good authority that Cissy's sire was a violinist. His group played Sirius's parents' wedding, and I doubt Dru would've looked twice at him if there _hadn't_ been magic in his music."

"Wait," "_what?!_" "Are you saying" "that Lady Malfoy's sire" "was some random guy," "in a _band?!"_

"Er, yes? Though not _entirely_ random — he _was_ a Lovegood, it wasn't like Walburga would've hired less than the best to play her wedding."

"A _Lovegood?"_ "Wait, Gred!" "What, Forge?" "This means that dear, darling Draco's maternal _grandfather_—"

"—is a Lovegood, yes," Hermione snapped, cutting them off. "Is that really important?"

"Of _course_ it is!" "It means we're not biologically related to the ferrety little tit!"

Hermione had to bite her lip to keep from laughing at that. Okay, maybe it _was_ important. "How does this 'performative magic' actually _work_, though? Is it like mind magic, or...?"

"Er...kind of? There's definitely a mind magic _component_, but it can also be physical, you know, making your heart rate increase and feeling physical excitement and such, kind of like how a Stunning Charm physically puts you out but a _Sleeping_ Charm acts through mind magic. There are stories about music being used for crowd-control, as a mass soporific or whatever, and there's a theory that the reason everything just seems to go _right_ for the Blacks in battle is that battle madness taps into a sort of combat-based performative magic, affecting the timing and coordination of everyone involved. Not that that theory has any studies to back it up, obviously, but I'd buy it. Being in a proper battle _was _more like dancing than fighting..."

She trailed off with that distant expression she often wore, thinking about the World Cup Riot — _i.e._, fantasizing about violence and bloodshed. Hermione had asked once, and in hindsight rather thought she would've preferred Lyra hadn't answered. (Much as she hated to admit it, Lyra and Gabrielle _had_ been right about her not being entirely comfortable with that side of her girlfriend.) But after a moment she shook herself out of it.

"As for how it works, I guess you'd say the basic idea is that you're using your body — or your instrument, as an extension of your body — and the ritual of the performance to focus your intent. It's not entirely different from using a wand as a focus, in principle, just less specific and controlled. Kind of a middle ground between witchcraft and wizardry. Hey, Mighty Doorkeeper! Is Ash Ryan in there?"

Wha— Oh, they were already at the base of Ravenclaw Tower. The eagle which served as the guardian of the Ravenclaw Common Room turned to fix Lyra with a single eye. "He is, yes. Do you wish to enter the Tower?"

"I don't suppose you'd just ask someone to let us in?"

"You suppose correctly, young lady. So: I always run, but never walk; I often murmur, but never talk; I have a bed, but never sleep; I have a mouth, but never eat. What am I?"

"_You_ are a door-knocker enchanted to spout riddles and thereby keep overly-literal people out of Ravenclaw Tower."

The twins burst into laughter. The eagle's beady brass eye narrowed — leave it to Lyra to annoy animated objects... "_You_ are no fun at _all_, Miss Black!"

"A painting of a pipe is not a pipe, Mighty Doorkeeper, and my answer is accurate. It will, in fact, continue to be accurate until you find a different format for your riddles. Let me in."

The door swung inward, despite the Eagle's continued annoyance. It actually tried to peck Lyra on her way past.

"You're a river," Hermione offered as a consolation, following her girlfriend into the airy, open room.

"Yes! Thank you! Was that so hard?"

"I hate riddles," Lyra muttered. "Also, why is this tower always so _bright?"_ It wasn't, especially — it was better-lit than Gryffindor, with the huge arched windows everywhere, the curved walls of the common room easily half glass, but with the sky grey and overcast today, it was hardly _blinding_. "Hey, Moon!" she called more audibly, skipping over to a girl in the year above theirs and a boy Hermione didn't recognise. "Where's Ash Ryan?"

The Ravenclaw broke off her conversation to raise an eyebrow at Lyra, which made her look uncannily like Lilian (a Slytherin in their year and, Hermione suspected, this girl's sister). "Upstairs, practising? Is he ever anywhere else?"

"Well, _I_ don't know, I don't live here. And the sound wards on the seventh-years' parlour are _really_ good."

"Yeah, there's a reason for that. And he's not going to be pleased if you go up there and interrupt him!" she called after Lyra, who was already skipping away again.

The Ravenclaw dorms were, in Hermione's opinion, the best in the castle. They all did have to share with a roommate, but only one, and all of the bedrooms on each floor opened onto a shared central space, with a spiral stair corkscrewing through the very centre of it. Much nicer, she thought, than having just the one Common Room like Gryffindor and having to share with _all_ the girls in their year.

By the time Hermione and the Twins caught up with Lyra she was already on the top floor, sitting on one of the stairs (which, oddly, continued all the way up to the ceiling), grinning at an annoyed-looking seventh-year and projecting an illusion to accompany...one of Beethoven's sonatas, maybe? Hermione wasn't familiar enough with them to say which (or even whether it was definitely Beethoven). She was mildly surprised that Lyra knew it well enough to do an illusion of the piano part. She'd have to suggest that she and Dad talk about music next time they ran into each other, rather than whatever disturbing thing Lyra would undoubtedly be preoccupied with — he liked to put on Classical music while he was cooking or gardening.

Oh, maybe she _wasn't_ that familiar with them, Hermione thought, as the violinist cut off suddenly, glaring at Lyra. "You switched pieces. That's the Tenth, not the Ninth."

"Yeah, well, it's been a while since anyone's played them for me. I always was shite at piano, anyway. _You need to be more expressive, Bellatrix! Slow down! Adagio and allegro are_ not interchangeable! _And stop playing intentionally out of key!"_ She rolled her eyes at her own impression of...whoever had had the misfortune to be tasked with making her sit still and practise. Her mother, maybe? "It's not _my_ fault practising is _boring_."

"Why are you here, exactly?" the Ravenclaw demanded, still wincing at the thought of playing _intentionally out of key_.

"You played at Walpurgis."

"...Yes? That was eight months ago."

"So? You obviously haven't forgotten how to play."

Ryan obviously thought Lyra was taking the piss, though Hermione didn't think she actually was. "_So_, why wait until now to bring it up?"

"Mmm, because we're doing this whole war game thing, you might've heard."

"I may not get out much, Black, but yes, I'm aware of the Triwizard Tournament. Congratulations, I'm sure you'll have loads of fun being an obnoxious little shite. To _other_ people. Piss off."

Lyra pouted at him. "But you haven't even heard what I want, yet!"

"Well then, get to the bloody _point_."

"Have you ever been to the Sorcerers' Symphony in Vienna?"

"What? There hasn't been a Viennese Symphony Orchestra for like, sixty years. Well, not a _magical_ one."

Hermione resisted the urge to slap a hand to her forehead. The upper classes in Austria had been _devastated_ in their _Gemeenschoppist_ revolution in the 30s, it wasn't a surprise trappings of high society might not have recovered, but of course _Lyra_ wouldn't have realised that...

"Oops. Venice? The Venetians are still stuck-up twats, right?" That one was safe, the _Signoria_ of the Republic of Venice had managed to crush the one major uprising they'd had, the nobles were still in power there.

One of the twins snorted behind Hermione, the other one muttering, "_Still?"_ That was probably going to be a problem... She'd referred to herself as _Bellatrix_ earlier too, Hermione realised belatedly.

Fortunately, Ryan didn't seem to have noticed. He was still glaring at them, though it looked a bit like he was trying not to laugh, too. "Yes, Black, I've been to live concerts before."

"Can you do the thing where you project the music to just a certain group of people and illustrate a story for them?"

"Er...yes?"

"If, theoretically, I put one of these red-headed gits up in the stands to relay what's going on and had the other narrate it to you, could you illustrate it for our people in the field?"

Ryan hesitated for a long moment, clearly considering the problem. "...Maybe? Not like the symphonies, I'd have to just suggest each part with a few bars and use magic to sustain echoes of them. I could probably only do two parts at once. _Maybe_ three, if they're simple... But it might work. _Maybe_. It'd be kind of _insanely_ difficult, but..."

"Great!" Lyra chirped, grinning like a bloody madwoman. "You have three days to figure it out. We'll see you Saturday morning. Come on, you lot, we still need to find, what, seven more people?" She slipped past them and started skipping down the stairs, leaving the bewildered-looking violinist staring at Hermione and the boys, as though he couldn't quite believe that had just happened.

"I didn't say I'd do it!" he called after her.

"Er...will you?" Hermione asked. If he _wouldn't_, they'd have to figure out something else. Though, if it was really going to be that difficult maybe they should do that _anyway_, just as a back-up? Not that she had the foggiest idea what else they might _do_... And they should probably have at least _one_ meeting with everyone _before_ the actual task, she'd have to talk to Lyra about that...

The Ravenclaw sneered at her. "Don't be thick, of _course_ I will. I'm just saying, it wouldn't hurt to show a bit of _appreciation_, here!"

"Have you" "_met_ Black?" "Assuming you'll do something insanely difficult," "or outright _impossible_," "without the slightest doubt that you _can_" "is about the closest thing she does to _appreciation_."

"Oh, piss off, apparently I have a soundtrack to write," the older boy snapped — though Hermione fancied he might look a bit flattered after all.


	43. Hogwarts 15 — The Scapegoat, The Brawler

"_Hey! Blaise! What'd Tori say?"_

"_She's in, obviously. And Theo's volunteering, if there's still slots to fill," Blaise said, tipping his head toward the boy accompanying him._

_Lyra grinned. "Yeah, you were on my list."_

"_I suspected I might be. Blaise says it's Capture the Crown? Do you want me on offence or defence?"_

"_Defence. I'm thinking Katie Bell and Thane Rowle with me on offense."_

"Rowle_?" Hermione repeated. "Why _him_?"_

"_He is one of the better fighters in the school," Lyra pointed out. "He and Bell are both into competitive dueling, and the Rowles are an Allied Dark House — five galleons says he has at least as much hands-on experience as Theo."_

"_More, probably," Theo said drily. "He has older brothers."_

"_But do you really think he'll follow your lead? I mean, you vetoed McLaggan, Yaxley, and Kirke because they wouldn't, and Rowle's more of an arse than McLaggan and Kirke combined."_

"_I said McLaggan, Yaxley, and Kirke wouldn't follow _your _lead, Maïa."_

"_Er, yeah, they probably wouldn't," Blaise agreed. "Morgana's used to being in charge herself. Kirke doesn't like coordinating with anyone else, and McLaggan's just a tool. Also, I think he's in hospital right now. But wasn't Rowle one of the idiots who attacked you last spring?"_

_Lyra shrugged. "He doesn't know that I know that. And even if he did, this is the fucking Triwizard Tournament. I don't think he's going to embarrass himself trying to attack me in the middle of it, with elves surveilling us and all."_

"_You can't honestly think he's going to follow your orders, though," Hermione insisted._

_Lyra shrugged again. "You need coordination on defence, not so much on offence — especially since the objective is just to tie up the other teams' strongest duelists. I specifically picked people I know can handle themselves independently against multiple opponents because I'm not so great at coordinated offence myself. I mean, I _might _be able to fight alongside Siri or Theo or Dora without us stepping on each other's toes, but we don't have the kind of time we'd need to get that degree of awareness with a doubles partner, let alone a trio."_

_Hermione sighed. "Fine. I just really hope you know what you're doing."_

_The other girl grinned, showing far too many teeth. "Of course I do."_

፠

"Are you sure this is a good idea, Lyra?" Theo asked, as she meandered back toward Slytherin with him. Rowle was probably in the Common Room — his clique generally was, when they weren't in class. They'd laid claim to the corner which had been, in her own time, the area where the Quidditch Team tended to hang out.

"Am I ever _not_ sure about anything, Theo?" she asked, smirking at him.

"Point," he admitted, though he didn't lose his serious frown. "I'm just saying, maybe there are better times and places to get revenge than _while you're fighting a bloody Cæciné_, and the Powers only know how many other trainee battle-mages, _in front of the entire school_ and, you know, _everyone else_."

"Who said anything about getting revenge?"

"Oh, were you _not_ planning on Rowle having an unfortunate accident involving friendly fire? My mistake."

"Well, maybe not-so-friendly fire? He did try to melt my face off, it only seems fair... But no, _I'm_ not going to curse him at all. I'm going to let everyone else do that. Should be fairly entertaining, assuming I can actually track down a pensieve to watch Blaise's memory of it — I'll be too busy in the moment to pay him much attention. After all, we are going to be outnumbered at least four to one, and he's bigger, older, and meaner-looking than Katie Bell or myself, no one will be surprised if a disproportionate number of opponents decide to focus on him."

He snorted trying not to laugh. "Do you really think everyone's going to think he's more dangerous than _Bellatrix Black's daughter_?"

"Well, not _everyone_ — I'd be shocked if Cæciné doesn't warn her team about me, and at least some of them will probably listen to her. But Bella's reputation outside of Britain doesn't really do her justice. So, yes." Outside of a few old Houses (like the Cæcinés) who had history with the House of Black, _most_ of Europe had only heard of her through Light propaganda, which tried to marginalise her and make her sound _way_ less terrifying than she actually was — because the _truth_ would've been _demoralising_.

"Karkaroff was a Death Eater, though."

"Yeah, but this is one of those occasions where being tiny and continually underestimated works for me."

"Aren't they planning on doing the Order of Merlin inductions _right_ before the task?"

"Oh, fuck, I forgot about that..." It would be a lot harder for people to convince themselves that she was _just_ a fourteen-year-old girl and hardly any sort of threat if they'd _just_ watched her getting a commendation for going above and beyond the call of duty, or whatever. It was still _incredibly surreal_ that the bloody _Order of Merlin_ had decided to _reward_ her losing her temper and getting carried away and doing something stupidly dangerous and excessively vengeful like _using runic casting_ to do a _solo Hostile Takeover_, and _integrate it into the Stadium wards_, _on the fly_, in the middle of a fucking _battlefield_, just because she was annoyed that those _idiots_ started a bloody riot and then couldn't hold up their end of it (no matter how impressive it was she'd pulled it off and not killed everyone doing so). "Still, it shouldn't really matter, anyway."

"Do I even want to know why?"

"Well, I probably shouldn't talk about it in public, but you know how Draco had that run of bad luck after he reversed Maïa's knees? How badly do you think it would've gone if he'd been dropped into the middle of a war game while that was going on?" Theo's eyes went _very_ wide as he got it. Lyra gave him a brilliant grin, and changed the subject. "Anyway, have you had time to look at that book, yet?"

It had occurred to her, when she'd finally noticed the book on occlumency that Anomos had found for her again (on Wednesday, so good call on past-Lyra's part, leaving it on her desk), that there might already be a translation of it around somewhere — the Blacks had squirrelled away an awful lot of esoteric shite over the centuries — and that Theo had spent a _lot_ more time in this universe's version of their library than she had. Obviously the thing to do had been to fob off the project of looking for a translation onto him. It wasn't like she hadn't managed to make some sense out of the first few paragraphs, all the hours she'd put into it, so assuming whoever translated it (hypothetically) had kept all of the boring shite at the beginning, it should be relatively easy to see if anything matched.

He gave her a rather _odd_ look. "I did, yes."

"And? Did it look familiar, like there might be a translation lying around somewhere? English, French, or Latin, preferably, but even _Danish_ would be better than Arabic. I don't speak Arabic _at all_."

"Neither do I, but..." He shot a nervous glance around the apparently empty hallway, then pulled her into a secluded nook and cast an anti-eavesdropping charm anyway. "Apparently I can read it. Apparently, I can read..._everything_. I just...didn't notice the last few weeks, because it all...kind of seems like English? Or, not _really_, just, it doesn't click that it's _not_ English, the actual _words_ get lost somewhere between my eyes and my brain. It's _really_ weird."

Well, that was just...kind of awesome. She meant, she _knew_ Thōth was a god of knowledge and writing, but she hadn't realised he gave his people the gift of being able to read _everything_.

_Did you know that, Eris? Why didn't you tell me? _

Eris didn't answer. She was currently pretending not to be paying attention to Lyra because Lyra was still kind of annoyed that she hadn't _warned her_ that she was about to be kidnapped and thoroughly beaten at the end of last term. She'd made a habit of disappearing whenever Lyra was thinking about the topic (or closely related subjects, like avenging herself on Rowle _et al._), much like she had a tendency to just retreat and emanate disapproval when Lyra got caught up thinking about the World Cup and how she _badly_ needed to find a dueling partner. (It was just so _frustrating_, knowing that there _was_ something so perfect as _actually fighting_ out there in the world, and not having anyone to _actually fight_...)

"...Lyra?"

Oh, right. Theo. Reading all of the things. They were talking about that. (_Focus, Lyra!_) "_Neat_. So, you can translate the thing for me, then?" Because that would be _very convenient_.

"Um... I...guess? It would take a while to do the copying, though."

"You could just conjure a copy. It doesn't have to last long, I'll take notes on anything important."

"I could _what?"_

"Er...conjure pages, with words on them? It's not hard. ...Is it?" She really didn't think it was. Kind of tedious, since you had to do every page individually, but it was _so_ much faster than writing... "I mean, you do have to go back and check the copy for accuracy, which takes a while—"

"But, how does that even _work?"_

"I...don't understand. I know you know how to conjure shite." She'd seen him use _Avis_ in duels before, at the very least.

"Well, _yes_, obviously I can do basic conjuring, but—"

"Paper is pretty fucking basic shite, Theo." She'd taught Meda how to conjure paper when she was ten.

"It is, yes, but to actually visualise every individual letter on every page to make it come out right? That's ridiculous. Completely absurd."

"Is it?" Honestly, she'd think someone would've said something by now if that trick was really that difficult to pull off. Not that she did it _often_, but she knew she'd done it a few times around Ciardha, and Meda (this universe's Meda) hadn't seemed all that surprised when she'd suggested it over the summer to translate the House Law. "Wait, you don't think I mean doing the whole book at once, do you? That _would_ be absurd, especially if you're translating as you go. I just do it one page at a time."

"Wait, are you saying you've actually _done_ something like this? I thought we were just talking hypotheticals."

"Of course I have. I just translated our House Law for Maïa's mum over the summer. Do you know how long it takes to copy three-hundred pages by hand? _Days_. Conjuring them is much faster."

"Sometimes I forget I'm talking to Bellatrix fucking Black," he muttered under his breath.

"I'm not sure what _that_ has to do with anything."

He shrugged, giving her a look she really couldn't interpret. "I always thought Cadmus was just playing the victim, or trying to make me feel like a weak little shite or whatever, saying I wouldn't last five minutes as one of her trainees, but— You really have _no_ idea what normal people are and are not capable of, do you?"

Lyra pouted at him. He had _no idea_ how much better she was at that now than she had been when she first came to school... "Is that actually relevant, here? People conjure animals and sculptures and shite all the time, and there's at _least_ as much detail in them as a few hundred words on a piece of paper."

"_Yes_, but you don't have to focus on _every single detail_ of something like that. You just recreate your impression of it. If I tried to conjure a translated copy of a page in a book, I bet I'd just get squiggles. Maybe gibberish."

Was he serious? She thought he actually might be. He _seemed_ serious... "Are you having me on?"

"What?"

"What do you mean _what?_ You _absolutely _have to focus on every detail of shite like that. Yes, conjuring a page without focusing on the details, you're just going to get a lot of squiggles, but if you conjure a bird or whatever without focusing on the details, you're basically just going to get an animated blob of ectoplasm that _looks_ like a bird, which, sure, maybe that's okay for, like, off-the-cuff battlefield conjuration, but it's not going to sustain itself very long. And while you may not care if your conjured bird-like object lasts more than five minutes, it's still fucking lazy, from a technical perspective..." And now he was giving her a very familiar _you're insane_ look, even though she was pretty fucking sure she was absolutely right about this. "Cadmus really never made you dissect your conjurations to make sure you're doing them right?"

"Um, _no_? Who the _hell_ taught _you_ conjuration?"

"Cassiopeia, when I was seven. She was kind of ridiculously excited that I made the Choice because it meant she could teach me _real_ magic and not just kiddie transfigurations." Which, okay, maybe it _was_ relevant that she'd had the channelling capacity to do real conjuration for fucking ever — Theo would just be coming into his power, he couldn't have been capable of casting really power-heavy spells for very long, and conjuration _did_ have a higher initialisation threshold than most other magics, so maybe no one had formally taught him how to do it yet? Though they really shouldn't have taught him dueling conjuration either, in that case. That was just _begging_ for him to get ingrained in bad habits — like thinking a lazy blob of ectoplasm with feathers was a bird.

"Cassiopeia Black, the metamorph Auror?"

She nodded — she hadn't been an Auror anymore by Lyra's time, but they were definitely thinking of the same person. "She was my favourite aunt. But she moved on when I was eight, not sure who or where she is in this timeline."

Theo shook his head, as though he didn't quite believe her. "Going to go out on a limb here and say metamorphs have higher standards for that sort of thing than normal people."

Well...maybe. But obviously you didn't _have_ to be a metamorph to _reach_ that standard. But they were getting off topic. "So, does that mean you _won't_ translate the book for me?" she asked, dragging him out of the nook to continue toward Slytherin.

"No, I will, it's just going to take a while. Maybe I can read it to a dictaquill or something. It's still going to take time, but I might be able to do it— Well, I was going to say Saturday, but it'll probably have to be next weekend, now."

Still longer than Lyra wanted to wait, but faster than if she were to send it out to be translated — especially since she'd have to find a translator first, and she had even less free time than Theo. She did _sleep_ less than he did, but reputable translators tended to prefer operating during normal-people business hours, so it'd be kind of hard to track one down when everyone else was sleeping. She gave him a heavy sigh. "That's fine, I guess."

Theo snorted at her. "You really need to work on that _showing gratitude_ thing."

"Hey, I didn't bitch and moan about how you _could_ do it _tonight_ if you didn't waste so much time sleeping," she joked. Not that it was _entirely_ a joke, Ciardha had spent _years_ drumming it into her head that she couldn't expect other people to stay up doing things with her just because _she_ thought they were important and/or fascinating and sleeping was _boring_. But she did know that it was unreasonable to ask someone to do favours for her _right fucking now_, no matter how impatient she was to find a way to keep Selwyn from casually invading her mind. "But thanks. I'll definitely owe you a favour."

"You— I wasn't angling for a favour, you know. Are you— What's the rush on this, anyway?" Theo asked, sounding oddly...concerned? "I thought you already knew occlumency."

"No, I turned my mind inside-out when I was little so I don't _have_ to learn occlumency. At least, not to keep out normal legilimens and throw off the Imperius and shite. But in case you haven't noticed, Sarah fucking Selwyn isn't exactly a normal legilimens. Meaning I suddenly find I have a reason to learn _actual_ occlumency — you know, other than certain people mocking me for being bad at mind arts even on a scale of _me_." She wouldn't go out of her way to learn occlumency just because Bella thought it was lazy letting Eris take care of any mind magic she needed to do (as opposed to an efficient division of labour), but. "Plus I'm supposedly an omniglot, assuming I can actually figure out how to _not_ occlude all the time, and I've heard our guests speaking at _least_ six different languages I _don't_ speak, or at least not _well_. It'd be kind of neat if I could pick them up while they're here."

"Uh-_huh_." Lyra had no idea which part of that he sounded so skeptical about. "I hate to break it to you, but even if you _do_ learn proper occlumency, you're probably not going to be able to keep a _thousand-year-old natural legilimens_ out of your head."

"Well, I'm _definitely_ not going to be able to if I don't even _try_ to learn proper occlumency." «_Open_,» she hissed at the main door to the Slytherin Common Room — so much more reasonable than fucking _riddles_, honestly — and putting a rather firm end to the conversation.

Maybe normal people weren't capable of learning occlumency well enough to fight off someone like Selwyn — at least long enough to get the fuck away from her, Lyra didn't think she'd ever actually be able to _hold her own_ against her for more than a few seconds, she wasn't an idiot — but _maybe_ they just never really tried. Even after _years_ of living with normal people, Lyra was still convinced that the biggest difference between her and them was their ridiculous belief that mediocrity was the best they (or anyone) could do. The fact that Bella had managed to train over a hundred mages to Hit Wizard combat standards, despite only one mage in five hundred _supposedly_ having the potential to reach that degree of competency, kind of proved that, Lyra thought. And even if this particular thing was actually impossible for normal people, Lyra wasn't a normal person, anyway. When _she_ tried to do "impossible" shite, it tended to actually _work_.

Compared to her conversation with Theo, the one with Rowle, inviting him to come get his arse handed to him on Saturday, was almost laughably brief. She let Theo slink off toward his room, shaking his head as though Selwyn's existence wasn't a perfectly reasonable incentive to learn proper occlumency, and skipped over to the Quidditch Corner. (Which was more like the Obnoxious Pureblood Supremacist Corner in this universe, but whatever.)

She leaned on the back of le Parc's armchair in such a way as to tilt it a few degrees back, just because he was an annoying twat. "Hey, Rowle." The Bletchley bitch — the one who'd broken every bone in her wand hand individually, Lyra still hadn't come up with a fitting response to _that_ — glared at her as though she thought Lyra ought to have greeted her as well, so she added, "Bitchley, Warbler, Carrows, _Stupid Cunt with a Death Wish_." She could practically _hear_ le Parc's teeth grinding as he restrained himself from leaping up from his chair to curse her _right fucking now_ — which would be _incredibly_ stupid, because he'd have to turn around once he actually made it to his feet, she could _definitely_ get a disarming spell off first. Or a lightning hex, whichever. (_Tee hee_.)

"What do you want, you little freak?" Warrington asked, as though he was the one she'd initially addressed.

"Not you, certainly. Unless you're a hell of a lot better at fighting than you are at insulting people, and we both know you're not. Rowle. You're on the Hogwarts team for the War Game this Saturday. Offensive squad. Clear your schedule."

Rowle, predictably, bristled at her presumptive tone. "Oh, I am, am I?"

"Yes. I mean, _technically_ I _guess_ you could say _no_, but that seems about as likely as Mallory Prince agreeing to go to the Yule Ball with you." Rowle's left eye twitched at the reminder of the _very_ public refusal he'd suffered at the beginning of term — apparently his father had been annoying the Princes about a potential marriage contract between the two of them, which the Princes had been reluctant to discuss. Thane had presumably thought that, if he were to get Mallory on his side, she'd help bring her parents around. As it turned out, it wasn't _Zorian and Crystal_ who had a problem with that particular match, it was Mallory herself. Which she had made _very_ clear. In front of the _entire_ Great Hall. The phrases _singularly unimpressive_ and _paragon of entitled mediocrity_ had figured prominently. Not that Rowle was a poor wizard, compared to the average population, but it seemed Zorian had instilled a higher standard of expectations in his daughter. (Good for him.) "I mean this _is_ the fucking Triwizard Tournament we're talking about."

"Why are you tapping _me_ for this, Black?" he ground out, after taking a short moment to master his temper.

"Is there some reason I shouldn't?" she asked, trying not to laugh at the look on his face as his eyes flicked down to meet le Parc's, clearly wondering what she knew about the reasons she presumably shouldn't trust him at her back. "We'll probably have at least one strategy meeting before Saturday, I'll let you know. Good? Good."

She skipped away before he could respond, though she slipped into the Shadows as soon as she was out of sight. Now she just had to find his room, grab something of his to use as a focus for the ritual, and she could go track down Bell...

፠

"Hey, Bell!" The fifth-year Gryffindors were just leaving Herbology when Lyra caught up to them, waving at Bell as she crossed the lawn with a few of her roommates. All four of them changed course slightly to intercept her.

"What's up, Black?" Bagnold asked, sounding rather suspicious. _Honestly_, Lyra wasn't _always_ up to something. (Even though in this case she totally was.)

"I just need a word with Bell. Privately," she added, as the other girls gave her various _she's right here, say whatever it is you want to say_ looks.

Bell herself just looked slightly confused. Maybe a bit intrigued. "Er...sure, I guess? You lot go ahead, I'll meet you in the Library."

"Great, come on." Lyra hooked an arm through one of Bell's leading her off toward the lake.

"Bloody hell, slow _down_, Black! Where are we going?"

"There's an old Circle out in the Forest, there's enough residual power there we can do a minor invocation without anyone noticing."

Bell stopped dead. "_What?!"_

"Oh, right. I assume that if I were to ask you whether you wanted to be on the offensive squad for the War Game on Saturday, you'd say yes?"

"Well, _yes_, but—"

"Well, come _on_, then. This is important to our strategy."

"Some weird ritual magic shenanigans are part of your strategy?! You know I want to go into the Aurors when I leave school, right? I'm not going to do anything illegal just to– to win some school tournament!"

"Yeah, why do you think I'm asking you to be on the team? And why do you think we're doing this out in the Forest? I'm not going to tell anyone, trust me there are enough people who'd love an excuse to throw me in Azkaban for a few months, and if I got caught doing high ritual like a fucking idiot, Meda and Siri might actually let them. If _you_ don't tell anyone, well, then, as far as the Aurors are concerned, it never happened, right?"

"_No_, Black! _I'll _know! This Tournament is _not_ important enough to jeopardise my entire bloody future! If your 'strategy' demands I do some high ritual shite to curse Artémisia Cæciné or whatever, count me out."

"What? We're not cursing _Cæciné_, why would we—?" Lyra trailed off, genuinely confused. Cæciné hadn't done anything to her, they'd barely even spoken. There _was_ some history between their families back in fucking _Henry's_ time, but it wasn't like they had ever formally declared a blood feud. They'd been much more evenly matched back then — the Blacks had had fewer battlemages, but a much broader intelligence reach — getting into a serious feud would have assured the destruction of _both_ of their Houses.

Bell blinked at her for a moment. "You _do_ know that she placed first in the I.C.W. student tournament just this summer, right?"

"Well, no, I didn't. Not _surprised_, but no. And why would I want to— Never mind. We're not cursing Cæciné, we're cursing Thane Rowle. And we're not _cursing_ him so much as...redistributing probabilities among our own people. Specifically, the probabilities of gaining the attention of and being seriously injured by our opponents."

It wasn't _quite_ the same thing Lyra had done when she'd found out that Draco had attacked Maïa, that really had been just asking Eris to ask Tyche to turn the pain and suffering he'd caused back on him threefold. This was actually a formal ritual, a scapegoating spell. It was _occasionally_ even used voluntarily, to focus enemies' attentions on the strongest or quickest or otherwise _least likely to die_ of your warriors, protecting the less-skilled and allowing them to attack more effectively. (Not unlike the strategy Narcissa had used at the World Cup to protect Draco, though the mechanism was very different.) But it was, admittedly, more often used by cowards hoping to save their own skins at the expense of their allies.

Bell's face twisted into an expression of disgust. "You invited _Thane Rowle_ to be on your team?"

"I owed him for a spot of trouble he was involved in last June."

"So he asked to be on the Hogwarts team as a favour?" Bell sounded somewhat incredulous. Which was silly, it wouldn't be a terrible favour to ask, if you were trying to get noticed by a scout for a professional dueling team or something — you couldn't really ask for a better showcase for your talents than the _fucking Triwizard Tournament_. A thousand galleons was a nice prize for the average mage, sure, but the exposure was _far_ more valuable to most participants.

Ryan had almost certainly agreed to figure out how to deal with their communication problem because, even if there weren't professional musicians in the audience, word _would_ still get around, especially if he pulled it off. Which Lyra had every confidence he would. He might be a bit prickly, but he was a fucking genius, and one of the best musicians she'd ever met. _She_ might have been cheating, reproducing Dru's performance of Beethoven's ninth sonata (and/or tenth, oops) — it was kind of lucky he'd been practising something she actually knew — but _Ryan_ had been playing it himself. That shite was fucking _ridiculous_. And he'd been doing multi-part improv performance magic at Walpurgis, she was sure he could figure out _something_. And she'd make sure that when it _did_ get around that everyone knew he'd designed whatever mad, brilliant solution he came up with himself, and he'd managed to put it together in _three fucking days_.

"Ah, no, I don't owe Rowle a _favour_, I owe him for trying to melt my fucking face off. Conjured _aqua fortis_. Nasty shite. I didn't even _do_ anything to him. _Bella_ didn't even do anything to him! If I recall correctly, _his _fucking problem with me is that I don't have the right pedigree for the Heir of the House of Black. Which is both fucking _ridiculous_, and also none of his business."

Honestly, she kind of suspected that Rowle just didn't like her appearing out of nowhere and showing up all the noble idiots who claimed to be the best mages of their generation any more than le Parc liked her making _him personally_ look like a moron. He was also one of those pricks who took his social status _far_ too seriously, and therefore hated that the House of Black refused to behave with the dignity _other noble houses_ thought they, as a Noble and Most Ancient House, ought to display (not unlike certain ferrety cousins she could name). Which betrayed a fundamental misunderstanding of the House of Black, but she supposed it was understandable since there hadn't really _been_ any Blacks for his entire life. She wouldn't really be surprised if he'd realised at some point since Sirius had made his triumphant return to Society that her general lack of fucks to give for the opinion of lesser nobles (or anyone at all) wasn't a product of her being an ignorant line thief, but that of a long, proud family tradition of taking the piss and telling idiots to go fuck themselves. But she also wouldn't be surprised if he considered Sirius to be an enormous class traitor, so same difference, really.

"He _what_—?! Is this— Are you talking about at the end of last term, when you and Potter disappeared? I thought you were obliviated!"

"That's what Pomfrey and Snape told me. Lavender wasn't, though." Both of those statements were technically true, even.

"Lavender? Lavender _Brown_?"

Lyra nodded. And if word got around that Lavender had been the one to tell Lyra who had been involved in her kidnapping and torture, Lyra was betting dear Bunny's earstwhile confederates would take care of the poor girl's punishment for her. To that end, she elaborated: "She was the one who ambushed me. Apparently she feels guilty about her involvement in the whole thing." According to _Blaise_, not Lavender, but still...

Unlike Rowle, Lavender actually had good reason to want some kind of revenge on Lyra — she _had_ been the target of a disproportionate number of malicious pranks over the course of the year. That, more than the fact that she'd attempted to stop the actual torture, made Lyra less inclined to make the idiot girl suffer for her role in the whole kidnapping incident. If the allies that, rumour was going to have it, Lavender had "betrayed" were sufficiently put out with her, Lyra might not actually do anything to Brown herself.

"Have you _reported_ her?!"

"...No? Why would I?"

"Black! The _Prophet_ said someone used the _Cruciatus_ on you! If Brown knows _who_— She should be questioned at the _very_ least! Don't you want to know—"

_Oh... Shite._ She hadn't anticipated _that_. Though, maybe she should have. Wannabe Auror, and all... "Don't be thick, Bell. I'm not going to set anyone up for a life sentence over a few seconds of pain."

"Black. _Lyra_. Unforgivable curses are Unforgivable for a _reason_."

Well of _course_ they were. "I know." She shrugged. "The Cruciatus, specifically, is Unforgivable because it can melt someone's brain, and you have to be a genuinely sadistic person to cast it _properly_, and that propensity along with a demonstrated willingness to potentially cause permanent damage to another human being suggests that someone who casts it successfully is very likely to torture or kill innocents in the future. Since the person who cast it _didn't_ melt my brain, and I apparently informed them at the time they didn't do it properly, I'm not turning them in." The fact that she wouldn't turn them in anyway, because it would be _incredibly hypocritical_ for her to turn _anyone_ in for being a sadist and/or causing permanent mental damage to people — the idiots she'd trapped in wraith-form at the World Cup were reportedly _not_ going to make a full recovery — was kind of irrelevant. "If you try to report Brown for her involvement and pressure _her_ into it, I'll deny this conversation."

"Black! Whoever did it deserves to rot in _Azkaban_! That—"

"No, they don't. Being locked up for the rest of their life for a few seconds of self-righteous fury and a single lapse in self-control, directed at the daughter of a woman who has committed capital crimes against them and their family? I _sincerely_ doubt that they're ever going to even _try_ to use it on anyone else — except maybe Bella, I guess, which is fine, Bella's a fucking bitch, and probably wouldn't let them anyway — so as far as I'm concerned that's the bloody _definition_ of _disproportionate response_." Especially since normal people didn't just think the idea of Azkaban was _boring as fuck_ — Sirius being as sane as he was after more than a decade in the presence of dementors was apparently kind of absurd. (And Sirius was hardly sane by ordinary person standards to begin with.) "This is why the Dark thinks the Light is full of shite, by the way."

"_WHAT?!"_

"This whole one law for everyone thing, rather than working shite out on a case-by-case basis? I mean, if Neville tried to use the Cruciatus on me because Bella tortured his parents into insanity and I told him that was perfectly reasonable because they were on opposite sides of a war, or something, and he failed to cast it properly because this is _Neville_, and I used it on, I don't know, _Draco_, because he's an annoying, ferrety little tit and the faces he makes when he's terrified are hilarious, under the actual letter of the law we would both deserve to go to Azkaban for the rest of our lives. Even though Neville's not exactly likely to try to torture anyone else, and even if he were, he isn't actually capable of doing so effectively, and I'm not saying I'm _planning_ on torturing people because it's funny, I know that's not on, but if I _were_ to start using Unforgivables on people for annoying me I probably wouldn't stop with _Draco_.

"_Ideally_, if justice were handled by _sane_ people, Neville would get off with a fine or something — honestly, I'm sure Sirius wouldn't even press charges, because who _doesn't_ occasionally want to torture me? — and the Wizengamot would give Draco special dispensation to use it on me three times as long as I used it on him or something, because _obviously_. Or, well, Cissy, probably — I'm sure _Neville_ could cast it better than Draco. Or, I guess if we were being tried by normal people, I'd probably just be chucked through the Veil, because if you care about the public good, some people — including mad Blacks who have decided fuck it, let's torture people for fun — are too dangerous to live." Honestly, it was still a little baffling that Crouch and Dumbledore had let _Bella_ live, Truce or no Truce.

Bell just stared at her for a long moment, apparently at a loss for words. Then, "Do you really think it was reasonable for Lestrange to torture the Longbottoms?"

Well, Lyra's immediate response was something along the lines of _shrug_..._kind of?_ but she knew that wasn't an acceptable answer. And that was kind of a hard question, actually. Obviously it hadn't _accomplished_ anything, but Lyra could understand why she'd done it — she'd been out of her fucking mind. Lyra would be the first to admit that she'd done some pretty fucking stupid shite when she was frustrated or furious, and she was pretty sure she'd never been as overwrought as Bella had been when Riddle's body was destroyed. Plus, plenty of ideas that were objectively reckless and entirely pointless seemed perfectly reasonable and necessary when she was mad. Lyra didn't remember _much_ from Bella's memories, but she did remember that Riddle disappearing had thrown Bella into Madness, enough that she'd completely lost any sense of perspective or self-control for a while there. Which, while not really _reasonable_, also didn't entirely seem like something Bella should be held responsible for?

"I think it probably seemed reasonable to Bella at the time. Her Lord, the one who'd had her enthralled since she was a little kid, had just been vanquished and was missing, but not dead. She thought the Longbottoms had information she could use to find and restore him, and she needed to make an example of _someone_ to make it clear that the war wasn't over just because Evans took Riddle off the field. I'm pretty sure she didn't _intend_ to go that far with them, though. And she obviously wasn't in a rational state of mind, because melting a prisoner's brain without getting any useful information from them, when I _know_ she knows how to question someone _much_ more effectively, is the sort of thing that suggests she wasn't really thinking clearly at all. I mean, she obviously wasn't _well_ — she went _quietly _when the Aurors finally caught up with her."

Evans really _had _been good. Lyra didn't think anyone else had _ever_ driven her _or_ Bella so far _down_, defeated her so thoroughly, that she'd actually _stopped fighting_. Maybe Cygnus, before she'd made her dedication? She knew she'd tried pretty fucking hard to placate him, thinking that maybe he'd stop using the Imperius on her if she stopped 'making him'. But she hadn't really been the same person back then.

"You..."

"Yes, I know, you and literally everyone else think I'm insane. That's fine, I don't care. I'm not even debating the point. I'm just saying, scapegoating Rowle so he takes the brunt of the attack on Saturday seems like a fairer response to his trying to melt my face off than reporting him to the legal authorities, because he doesn't deserve to spend a couple of years in Azkaban for kidnapping and assaulting the under-age heir of a Noble and Most Ancient House, and irreparably ruining his reputation and his sanity even after he gets out — the _vast_ majority of released prisoners never properly recover, you know — but he also doesn't deserve to be entirely acquitted, which are the only two outcomes with actual precedent in Wizengamot trials for that sort of thing. Getting him cursed to seven hells in order to save the two of us some pain and suffering and then calling it even seems much more proportionate."

Bell was wavering, Lyra could tell — she looked uncannily like Maïa on the cusp of admitting that Lyra was completely right about something 'good people' didn't agree with, all tense and conflicted.

"What, you think he _should_ go to Azkaban just for kidnapping and assaulting me? He didn't actually do any permanent damage, after all. Or you just don't want to admit that the law is wrong?"

"No, Azkaban is awful, I don't think it should be used as punishment for minor crimes but— You can't just go around deciding for yourself what's fair or proportionate or reasonable and– and _doing shite_ to people—"

"Why? Because that's the _Ministry's_ job? They aren't the injured party, and if you think my plan isn't fair, proportionate, and reasonable, _I_ think you would have said as much." She let a smirk play around her lips. "Why do you want to be an Auror, Bell?"

"What kind of— To _help_ people! To protect them when they can't protect themselves!"

"Yeah, that's what Dora and Sirius said, too. To _stop dark mages from hurting civilians_, basically. Which, if you think about it, is exactly what we're doing here. Teaching Rowle that there are _consequences_ for his actions, that he _will_ be held responsible for hurting people — don't worry, I'll make sure he knows exactly why he had such shite luck, after — without making _him_ a victim of the legal system itself, and/or making him an even greater danger to others after however long in Azkaban." This was, as far as Lyra was concerned, an unassailable argument. It had worked on _Maïa_, when she'd been trying to convince _her_ that Lyra taking care of her attackers herself was perfectly reasonable and really for the best all around.

Bell opened her mouth to protest anyway, though, so she added, "Think of it this way: I'm not turning him in, and I'm not letting him get away with it. And I don't _think_ you're going to turn _me_ in for _wanting_ to get him back, because I'm the victim here — kidnapped and tortured, if you recall." She was..._pretty_ sure about that one. But that was one of the reasons she kind of had to convince Bell to go along with it, now — if she were equally culpable, she couldn't just go turning Lyra in for practising black arts. Well, she was far less likely to, at least. "If you help me do _this_ to him, you'll at least know I'm not doing something even worse to him because you stopped me from doing this."

Bell hesitated. "Why did you even tell me in the first place?"

Lyra grinned. She was _pretty sure_ she'd just won. "Well, when I say I'm going to adjust our relative probabilities of getting the shite kicked out of us, I mean I'm _mostly_ going to give you all of his good luck and him all of your bad luck. See, I don't _have_ bad luck in a fight, and Cæciné is probably good enough she's not likely to be swayed much by this little ritual anyway — she's not likely going to be causing incidental damage that could affect one enemy more than another just by chance—" Not to mention her own family gods would probably stop Lyra's (and Tyche's) meddling from affecting her. "—and I'm planning on dealing specifically with _her_, so you're kind of important to the whole equation."

"But...why _me_? You had to know I wouldn't approve of this sort of thing." She actually sounded more annoyed that Lyra had put her in an awkward moral dilemma than anything, she decided.

"Yeah, but I also know that you can take care of yourself in a fight against multiple opponents, and that last week when your friend Chelsea Lewis hexed Prefect McLaggan for grabbing her arse, Rowle told McGonagall it was unprovoked, so McGonagall gave Lewis detention and McLaggan got away with harassing the pretty muggleborn yet again. So I figure you're not likely to cry for poor little Rowle getting the worst of it on Saturday."

"I'd be a lot _less_ likely to cry for McLaggan," Bell groused. "_He's_ the one who thinks it's okay to put his filthy paws wherever he likes. I can't _believe_ McGonagall made _him_ a _prefect_..."

"Oh, has Pomfrey already managed to get his hand unstuck from his _own _arse? Maïa said something," she added, by way of explaining why she had stuck McLaggan's wand hand to his own arse, though she supposed it could also be taken as an explanation for how she knew about the arsehole's predicament. She had been pretending not to, after all, to avoid suspicion.

Maïa had been the one to actually _witness_ the whole incident between McLaggan and Lewis, not Lyra, but Rowle had been closer to them by the time Lewis had actually hexed him, so McGonagall had taken his word (and McLaggan's) over Maïa's (and Lewis's), much to Maïa's outrage. _Someone _— Lyra was certain she couldn't possibly say _who_ — had somehow contrived to coat McLaggan's wand hand with Flesh Fusing Ointment, and bonded it to his arse in his sleep — again, she couldn't possibly say _how_. But she _could_ say that if you used enough of that shite on a sufficiently fleshy area of the body it was possible to sink, say, a hand, far enough into fat and muscle that, unless Pomfrey knew something Lyra didn't (which, she might, Flesh Fusing Ointment _was_ a healing potion), McLaggan was going to need a complete arse-ectomy to get it back, and probably some reconstruction of the hand in question, too. If Pomfrey were willing to just cut it loose and use something like that healing spell Bella had used on Lyra last time she'd seen her, it probably wouldn't take that long, but it would hurt like hell. And Lyra kind of doubted Pomfrey would be willing to use such blatantly _dark_ healing magic. If she were, McLaggan would have been at breakfast today.

"You _didn't_..."

"I haven't the foggiest idea what you're talking about, Bell," Lyra said firmly, giving her a grin that said she absolutely had. "So, in light of the fact that you _clearly_ believe I _would_ do something that might cause severe and lasting harm to someone for a crime far less severe than attempted face-melting—" Not _really_, annoying Maïa was kind of higher on Lyra's list of things deserving of retribution than causing temporary physical harm to Lyra herself, but less severe by normal people's standards. "—are you going to help me fuck over Rowle or not?"


	44. Hogwarts 15 — The Healer, The Saboteur

"_Okay, so..." Hermione took a moment to peer at the roster they'd constructed. "We still need four more people to defend our own base. Here, Blaise, Lyra made a list of the better duelists in the upper years — not even going to _ask _how she knows that... Do any of them have decent occlumency skills?"_

"_She asked Gin. We have a dueling club, now, remember? And... I'd say no on Corner, Jordan, Bagnold, and Lofton... Bletchley's a pretty good occlumens, but she wouldn't take direction from you. Same with Wilkes. Really the only decent prospect here is Nick Jones."_

"_Well, crap. Still, I don't suppose we should really be concentrating on duelists, anyway. I mean, yes, we'll need people who can fight, or at least defend themselves, but it would probably be a good idea to find people who could help fortify our position after we deal with the initial wave, then we wouldn't have to try to intercept every attacker individually, and— Oh! A healer! We should have a healer! You know, just in case..."_

"_Ah...we could ask Moreau. Violet, she's a seventh-year Hufflepuff. If you've been to Pomfrey this year, you might've seen her around, she's trying to get a jump on healer training."_

"_Okay, so that's two."_

"_And if you want a fortress," "you should talk to Mal."_

"_Mal? Who's Mal?"_

"_Mallory Prince."_

"_The Ravenclaw prefect?"_

_The twins nodded. "She's the reason" "we don't fuck with Ravenclaws." "Can't take a joke." "Likes to make traps." "Ironic little _have a taste of your own potion _sort of traps." "Kind of like Snape, really." "But prettier." "And less miserable." "And more talkative." "So, more like Maïa, really."_

"_She _is_, isn't she? I hadn't really noticed, but you're absolutely right," Blaise said, sniggering slightly._

"_Is that supposed to be a compliment?"_

_The boys exchanged amused looks. It was the Slytherin who answered, as cryptically as ever. "I think we'll let you decide that for yourself. I'm going to find Nick."_

፠

The twins went with Hermione to invite Violet to join the team — largely because Hermione didn't spend much time in hospital (and so had never properly met her), and the twins rather doubted that the Hufflepuff healer would believe _them_ if they were to tell her that Lyra and Harry wanted her on their team. Probably not an unreasonable concern, honestly, knowing the twins telling random people that they were being recruited for the Hogwarts team was _exactly_ the sort of thing they'd think was hilarious. Especially if they weren't on the team themselves. It would be a 'funny' let-down for whatever poor saps they invited under false pretenses in a _ha, ha, made you look_ sort of way, and also annoy and frustrate Lyra when people started showing up asking what they were doing and such. Not unlike Hermione imagined Dumbledore and Crouch had been annoyed when Lyra's extra judges and dignitaries had started showing up in Britain (though of course at a much smaller, actually amusing rather than enormously disruptive scale).

Hermione had almost finished explaining to the unofficial trainee healer how Lyra and Harry had left everything to the last minute as usual, but if she could possibly manage it Hermione thought she would be a great asset to their school's team, when they were interrupted by a patient stumbling out of his curtained-off cubicle, a sheet wrapped around himself awkwardly, one hand bracing his lower back beneath it, she thought. It took her a moment to recognise Cormac McLaggan. The fifth-year prefect looked _terrible_, his face drawn with pain and exhaustion, hair lank and greasy — a far cry from the overconfident arse who thought he was God's gift to witches. Which, Hermione didn't want to think it was a _good thing_, exactly, that he looked so completely miserable, but she did get a little frisson of satisfaction seeing him like this. He just made everyone else — or, well, mostly Chelsea and Eloise, and Patty and Laura (Hufflepuffs in his year) — miserable, either hitting on them (Chelsea and Laura) or continually mocking and degrading them, much like Malfoy used to do to Hermione herself (Eloise and Patty). It seemed like karma of a sort for _him_ to obviously be in such a wretched state.

"Cormac?" Violet said, crossing over to him and laying a hand on his shoulder to guide him back toward his bed, obviously trying to be firm with him, but Hermione could tell she already knew he wasn't going to do whatever she asked him to do. "Madam Pomfrey said you're to stay in bed. The pain-killing potion you're on can produce dizzy spells. You know that."

"Piss off, Moreau, you're not a real healer! If you don't let me go to the bloody loo, I swear I'll take a piss right here in the middle of the fucking ward!"

"Okay, okay, just— Sit down, I'll call Andrew to—"

"I don't need a fucking minder to walk two dozen steps, take a leak, and walk back, you overbearing harpy!"

"Madam Pomfrey said—"

"I _know_ what that senile old hag said, you stupid bitch! I was _here_, in case you don't remember! I don't _care_!" He twisted, jerking his shoulder out of her grip and stalking toward the toilets at the end of the ward. He did, admittedly, look steady enough, he probably would be fine, but sometimes those symptoms could come on awfully suddenly, if Madam Pomfrey said someone needed to go with him someone should. (And either way, there was no call to be such a jerk to Violet over it!) "See! Walking! Just fi— _Aah_!"

He cut off with a surprisingly high scream as he pitched forward, the sheet he'd been wearing as a makeshift toga suddenly wrapped around his ankles, one twin tucking his wand back into his pocket as the other maintained the levitation charm that had caught the wanker two inches from a very painful encounter between his nose and the unforgiving stone floor.

"Careful, there, McLaggan!" he said sarcastically.

Obviously they'd just done that on purpose. If Hermione weren't so distracted by the sight presented by the loss of the sheet, she might have said something, at least pointed out that it hadn't been a very kind thing to do to someone who was already in hospital (even if McLaggan _entirely_ deserved it).

"Is his hand...?" It...looked like it was stuck to his bum. Except, not exactly. More like, his right wrist just...abruptly ended... As though his hand were..._inside_ his— How had he even _done_ that?

"Yep." "Looks almost like someone" "was trying to make a point of some kind."

(Oh, right, obviously he hadn't _accidentally done that to himself_, Jesus, Hermione...)

"What the _hell_ are you arseholes talking about? Let me _down_!"

"Weren't you just up in front of McGee for grabbing some girl's arse?" the twin who had tripped him asked, as the other obliged his request to be let down...though he 'accidentally' raised the prick a few more inches before dropping him flat on his face. He yelped, scrambling to sit up and cover himself with one hand (hiding the fact that he wasn't _nearly_ as impressive as he liked to imply).

"_Oops_. Kind of poetic, if you ask me, Forge."

"Indeed, Gred. If I thought our dear Potions Master were inclined to mete out justice for crimes so minor as arse-grabbing, I might attribute it to him."

"But he's not. Prince?"

"Not her style. Yaxley?"

"Out of the game, lately. Shame — such talent! such moxie! Not Lewis herself, surely."

"No, she's hardly the type to avenge herself on wizards who take advantage. If she _were_, this little worm wouldn't take advantage in the first place. One of the blokes making a stab at honest chivalry for once?"

"But who among our fellow blokes has a single chivalrous bone in his body, when he's not trying to get an _un_-chivalrous bone in—" The boy cut himself off with a slightly embarrassed clearing of his throat as Violet made a rather horrified squeak of offended disapproval at his raunchy joke. "Sorry, ladies. Black?"

Wait, _what_?

"Why would she bother?"

She _hadn't_, had she?

"Because the arse-grabber's arse-grabbing hand is stuck in his own arse, and that's fucking hilarious?"

That did, admittedly, seem like a very _Lyra Black_ reason for somehow shoving a boy's hand _into _his own arse-cheek, but...

"You do have to admire her style, Forge," said the twin who had previously been identified as Forge. "Ironic."

"Devious."

"A little bit cruel."

"But undeniably amusing."

"You can stop, now," Violet said drily, as one of the other trainee healers (presumably Andrew) helped the irate (and very red-faced) McLaggan off to the loo. "But thank you. Maybe he'll actually listen to me next time. I kind of doubt it, but... Where were we?"

"I was asking you whether you might be able to join our team for the War Game on Saturday," Hermione reminded her, trying not to think about Cormac McLaggan, his bum, and her girlfriend going anywhere near it.

Violet grinned. "Of course! I'm not working and it sounds like fun, count me in."

"Great! Thank you!" Good, they could check _healer_ off her list... "We're having a strategy meeting on Friday after dinner, just to get everyone in one place at one time and make sure we're all on the same page, I'll let you know when we figure out where."

"Sounds good—"

A young girl's voice interrupted, calling sleepily from one of the other curtained beds. "Hello? Is anyone there? Can I have a glass of water?"

"Just a second, sweetheart! I'll be right there! You can see yourselves out, right?"

"Of course." Hermione shooed the boys back toward the corridor. "Thanks again, Violet!"

She managed to make it about four steps into the corridor before she caved to the urge to ask, "You don't _really_ think Lyra could have done that to him, do you?"

The boys exchanged a look over her head, probably for effect. (Much like their 'speculation' about who might have thought doing _that_ to McLaggan was both reasonable and amusing.) One of them cast an anti-eavesdropping charm over the three of them as the other pulled her into an empty classroom.

"_Absolutely_." "Who _else_ would have?"

"But... _Why?_ What _possible_ reason could she have had?" Yes, McLaggan was a prick, but he hardly ever made passes at anyone in their year, and Lyra barely even _noticed_ that sort of thing, anyway.

"Maïa, we think there are some things you need to know about your girlfriend." "Things we're not sure you can possibly know if you're surprised that she'd do something like that."

Hermione scowled at them. The question wasn't whether she _would_ — she certainly had the means to creep into the boys' dorm, and Hermione would be shocked if Lyra couldn't give her at least five ways to shove someone's hand into their arse-cheek off the top of her head. And since she apparently _never bloody slept_ (which Hermione still thought couldn't possibly be healthy), she obviously had opportunity. What she didn't have was any motive to speak of. She would undoubtedly think it was funny, but the idea wouldn't have occurred to her in the first place if McLaggan hadn't somehow attracted her attention. "If you're about to tell me that she's _really _Bellatrix Lestrange, don't bother."

"No, we know you know that." "Everyone knows that." "She's not even trying to hide it anymore." "No, we're about to tell you that our parents were in the same year as Bellatrix Black," "and she and Mum are second-cousins." Hermione actually knew that — the cousin part, she did share a room with Lyra _and Gin_, it had come up. "They don't like to talk about her," "or the war in general, really," "but the Bellatrix Black _they_ knew in school was Mirabella Zabini's enforcer." "Went around pranking people and screwing with their heads at her direction." "We're talking 'pranks' like driving Trelawney insane or 'killing' Harry Potter, not just dosing the whole school with a babbling potion or melding that prick's hand into his own arse."

"Oh, come off it, Lyra didn't actually _mean_ to drive Trelawney insane, and she didn't know how badly Dumbledore would react to her taking Harry on holiday." Probably. "She doesn't _plan_ things, she just..._does things_."

"If you think she didn't plan for people to think Harry was dead, you're deluding yourself." "But that's not the important part of what we're trying to tell you," the boys said, uncharacteristically serious.

"Well what _is_, then?"

"She—" "Bellatrix" "—used to do this sort of shite _for Mirabella Zabini_." "Her _girlfriend_."

Lyra probably had, too, before coming here. But Hermione somehow doubted that Lady Zabini had asked her to do _this_. "What exactly are you implying, here?"

"Calm down, firecracker," "we don't think you asked her to." "That's kind of the problem." "And yes, we know that Lyra and Bellatrix aren't _exactly_ the same person," "but she _is_ a bloody clone of her —" "same brain." "And you can't deny that Lyra obviously has a few of the same limiting phrases scratched out." Hermione presumed that was the magical equivalent of having a screw loose. "And Bill said her childhood was a lot like Bellatrix's," "minus the whole Dark Lord thing." Had she— She hadn't told Bill Weasley who she was and where she'd come from, had she? _Damn_ it, Lyra... "So it might not be entirely wrong-headed to think that some of Bellatrix's behaviour could be used to predict how Lyra might act in certain situations."

"..._Go on_..."

"We think it seems unnervingly likely that if _someone_ were to tell her that she wanted Lyra to convince McGee to let our baby sister stay in her dorm room," "or complain loudly and at great length about their Divs professor being a useless fraud," "or how no one ever _does_ anything about arseholes like McLaggan going around acting like the chauvinist pigs they are," "Lyra might just take it into her head to do something about it." "Without taking into account that it's really not okay to go around threatening professors in their own bedrooms," "or driving them insane," "or casually maiming prefects." "Even prefects who are complete boors and set themselves up perfectly _all the time_."

_What?!_ They couldn't _possibly_ believe that Lyra had– had done _that_ to McLaggan _for Hermione_, could they? They _had_ to know she wouldn't — _Lyra_ had to know she wouldn't approve of... Had they said _casual maiming_?!

"You can't be serious, she hasn't— She..." Hermione _wanted_ to say she _wouldn't_, but she had a sick, sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach that Lyra actually _would_ maim someone who annoyed her badly enough. She _had_ to know Hermione wouldn't like it, but that would explain why she hadn't _mentioned_ it, wouldn't it? And McLaggan had even _come up_ earlier — Hermione had (reluctantly) suggested him as one of the few upperclassmen whose skills she knew anything about. He was one of Professor McGonagall's best Transfiguration students — that was one of the reasons, Hermione suspected, that their Head of House had chosen him as a prefect in the first place — so he might have been useful on their team.

"McLaggan _is_ going to need his entire hand reconstructed, you know." "If that were a transfiguration effect, or even a straightforward insertion of intact hand into otherwise intact arse, Pomfrey would already have fixed it." Which would be why Lyra hadn't just _done that_. "We're betting she found a way to physically meld the muscles of his arse and hand together. That's not easy healing." "It'll probably be _years_ before he can cast properly again."

Hermione felt her eyes go wide at that — it made _sense_, of course, magic was channelled through the nerves, causing major damage to the nerves in someone's _wand hand_ would almost certainly have long-term consequences for their ability to use a focus like a wand — but...but Lyra would _know_ that. And she'd...done it _anyway_. Because...because...

"And in that case, that _someone_ should maybe think carefully about what she may or may not ask her girlfriend to do," "_problems_ she might or might not imply need to be _solved_," "especially if she's not specifying exactly _how_ such problems might or might not be solved."

"What are you trying to say, here?" she asked, mostly because they trailed off all expectantly, she had to say _something_... Something other than _oh, my God, I'm dating a crazy person, what the hell was I thinking, she's going to end up killing someone _— another _someone_ — _and it's going to be my fault._

"What we're saying is, you're lucky she didn't turn him into an actual pig and feed him to an acromantula or something." "Because she was bored, and you suggested that he's a pig and the world would be better off without people like him." "Just something you may want to keep in mind."

Seriously? She couldn't even— Okay. First off, they didn't know _for certain_ that Lyra had done this, and even if they had, they didn't know _why_, there could be some other perfectly innocent motivation (meaning one that didn't implicate _Hermione_)...like, maybe McLaggan had molested _Gabrielle_, or something. But... But even if there _were_, the fact that Hermione was so willing to believe that this — all of this — sounded horribly, _horribly_ plausible didn't say anything good, did it?

She was going to have to ask, she realised. She didn't want to know, and she had to ask anyway. And if the answer was _yes, Maïa, of course I did it, he was harassing Lewis, and you went on a twenty-minute tirade about the lack of feminist sentiment in Magical British society. Obviously he oughtn't to have been allowed to continue going around molesting girls with impunity. So I punished him. If you didn't want me to _casually maim _him, you should've been more specific_ — she really had _no_ idea what she was going to do.

(Hermione was in _so_ much trouble.)

፠

"Hey, Jones," Blaise greeted the seventh-year Hufflepuff, taking an uninvited seat at his table in the library. From the look of things, he was attempting to build a small fortress out of Defence textbooks.

"Zabini. What's up?" he asked distractedly, flipping to an index.

"Oh, well, I was going to invite you to join the Hogwarts team for the War Game this Saturday, but if you're busy..."

It took a second or two for that sentence to sink in, distracted as he very clearly was. "What? Yes, of course! I was going to watch with Sheena—" His girlfriend, a seventh-year Gryffindor. "—but I think she'll understand! Er...was there anything else? I mean, meeting times, or...?"

"There's going to be a meeting with everyone after dinner on Friday, I'm not sure where, yet, Lyra will let you know. Or more likely Maïa Granger, she's commanding the fort — I'm just helping with recruitment. And then obviously they'll be meeting Saturday morning, and all heading down to the arena together."

"Right, right, okay..." The Hufflepuff scribbled a note about the meeting for himself. "So...is that it?"

"Yeah, pretty much. What are you so preoccupied with?" Without actually slipping _into_ his mind, it felt like...werewolves? That was kind of weird, Blaise thought, because Cassie was definitely making sure her classes covered them before OWLs...

Jones clicked his tongue in annoyance, glaring at the pile of books. "It's this essay for Snape..."

"Since when is Snape teaching Defence?" Blaise prompted him, when he trailed off again.

The older boy sighed. "He's not. We're doing mind-altering potions. We're supposed to be figuring out the mechanisms behind the efficacy of Belby's Wolfsbane Potion, and literally _everything_ I've found on the ingredients suggests it's _mostly_ a soporific. A _targeted_ soporific, which is bloody _weird_, and obviously the thing he wants us to look at, but I hit a dead end on the Potions side of it. I have no bloody clue what it's targeting, or how, or why you would want to target _part_ of a mind and force it to sleep. So I thought I'd try looking at it from the werewolf side, but all of these books are bloody _useless_."

Blaise snorted. "Yeah, pretty much everything on werewolves is. _Out of the Wyld_ is good, and _Hairy Snout, Human Heart_, but they mostly talk about the social side of the Curse, the question of embracing it, whether reservations are the way to go and so on. Hela's Observations is pretty much the only thing that's been written on what the curse really _is_, how it works." In English, anyway. "There's a couple things in _Human Heart_ about what it feels like, trying to fight it, but other than that..."

"You...know a lot about werewolves, Zabini?" he asked, thinking _very_ clearly that that was _bloody weird_.

Blaise shrugged. Most people thought he was bloody weird. He'd take that over them being scared of him _because legilimens_ any day. "I've met a few. Mother does tend to have friends in the _oddest_ places, you know. And they're not nearly so ostracised in the Americas as they are here."

Plus, he'd heard about werewolves when he was six or seven — before he learned about animagi — and had thought it was the coolest thing ever, being able to turn into an animal. He was fully on board with Harry's ambition to become animagi as soon as possible, they'd just questioned Sirius about how the whole process worked, using Lyra's portal to pop down to Ancient House for a couple of hours. (Part of Blaise and Gabbie's effort to make Harry feel less shite about being dragged into this bloody Tournament.) It was kind of an intimidating project, honestly. They'd decided to just focus on one step at a time so it wouldn't seem so overwhelming.

The first step was to figure out what animal resonated with their soul and self-image. Practically, this meant a fair amount of reading about animal symbology, and a lot of meditating. Sirius recommended getting drunk and possibly taking a couple different hallucinogens first, because of course he did. It supposedly helped the whole process along much more quickly than _just_ meditating, and Sirius was almost as impatient a person as Lyra. (And it was hardly as though Sirius actually needed a reason to get fucked up, anyway.)

Harry hated the idea of doing drugs, especially drugs that would alter his perception (control issues, Blaise wasn't surprised), so they definitely weren't doing that. Which was honestly fine by Blaise. He might not mind the idea _in theory_ — eavesdropping on Sirius when _he_ was high and kind of getting to experience it vicariously really had been a lot of fun — but in practice, even drinking too much made it hard to keep his empathy locked down. Everything tended to get very loud and overwhelming, very quickly.

Harry and Gabbie were convinced that Harry would be a bird of some sort, and Harry insisted that Blaise was a cat (his patronus was a cat, and reminded him of Blaise, which was fucking adorable — he'd laughed his arse off at the memory of Harry's Divination exam last year), but it would probably be weeks, if not _months_, before they could confirm that for themselves.

"Yeah, okay. You said _Hela_, right? What kind of name is _that_?"

"A pseudonym. Norse goddess of death, I think? She ran with Greyback's pack for years. They called her Hela because she was basically Fenrir's adopted sister." Not that that was in the essays. Mira had told him that Hela was actually Bellatrix when he was maybe ten, but it was Lyra who'd told him that Fenrir treated her like an annoying little sister. (Which was funny as hell — she was the bloody _Blackheart._)

"Wait, you mean _the_ Fenrir Greyback? Paedophile, cannibal Fenrir Greyback?"

"I have it on good authority he's not actually a paedophile, that's just Light propaganda. And I'm..._pretty_ sure he's not a cannibal, either. The Curse wants to propagate itself, so werewolves hardly ever kill their victims. I'm sure they eat them even less often."

"Good authority — you mean Black? I heard that, but I thought it was just a rumour."

One of the more reasonable ones, Blaise wasn't surprised Jones thought it sounded plausible. There was a certain werewolf-like _intensity_ about Lyra. Though if she _had_ been raised by werewolves, she'd probably actually _be_ a werewolf, and she clearly wasn't. Blaise shrugged. "I'm sure I couldn't say. But you said you were looking at potions that just target _part_ of a mind, right?" he asked, changing the subject. "Have you looked at the potions they use on legilimens who've managed to fracture themselves?"

Jones gave him a disgusted sigh. "Zabini, I don't even know what that means. I'm not a mind mage or a Potions nerd, I'm a Charms-and-Transfiguration guy. I'm only taking this bloody class because the Aurors want a NEWT in Potions!"

Blaise _briefly_ considered explaining that you didn't actually need to take Snape's NEWT class to take the exam at the end of the year — if you did, hardly any Hogwarts students at all would be qualified to continue into Auror training or Healing or half a dozen other disciplines that wanted a NEWT in the subject. He covered everything on the NEWT before OWLs. But if Snape had thought it would be a waste of time for Jones to take the class, he would have told him that himself.

"Er, there's an occlumency trick where you can split your focus to think about two things at once — you might have heard of that, a lot of duelists learn it." Jones nodded. "A legilimens can sometimes accidentally have their mind start resonating with someone else too thoroughly, so they think they _are_ that person. Losing yourself, that's called. If that happens to one half of your mind while your focus is split, you can start thinking you're multiple people, sharing one body. That's fracturing. Sometimes it happens to non-legilimens, too, with emotional trauma at a young age, but point is, there are potions that are used to target one part of the mind and force it to sleep, so it can be properly reintegrated with the primary personality. I _think_ the Wolfsbane Potion does that to the instinct to propagate the curse. Basically."

It was _far_ more complicated than that, really, and potions that only affected _part _of the mind were ridiculously difficult in the first place, but that was more or less what he'd managed to pick up in legilimency lessons last year, while Snape was brewing it for Lupin all the time. (Blaise wasn't really a Potions nerd, either.)

Jones's relief to actually have some direction for his research, and consequently his essay, was nearly palpable. "Really? Thanks!"

"You can thank me by kicking arse on Saturday, yeah?"

Jones laughed. "Sure thing. Tell Black and Potter that I'm in."

፠

Hermione tried to put her suspicions about the origins of McLaggan's predicament out of her mind as she made her way back up to Ravenclaw Tower in search of Mallory Prince. Unfortunately, that was _much_ easier said than done.

Honestly, how was one supposed to ask one's girlfriend whether she might have just possibly caused serious, lasting harm to a boy over... Well, Hermione didn't really consider his constant harassment of the girls in the year above her to be a _minor_ offence, but compared to ruining his ability to use a wand for _years_, it kind of was — and a rant fueled more by Hermione's annoyance over Professor McGonagall _ignoring_ her than anything else. Yes, McLaggan was a _jerk_, and he _definitely_ didn't deserve to be any sort of authority figure, but he didn't deserve _that_.

...Maybe she hadn't done it.

They'd had several discussions since returning to school about whether Lyra ought to turn in the unfathomably stupid cowards who had kidnapped, beaten, and attempted to obliviate her at the end of last term, and the core of Lyra's argument _against_ turning them in was always that the punishment would be disproportionate to the crime. Which, Hermione couldn't really disagree — the dementors had been quite bad enough stationed at the very edge of the grounds, she couldn't imagine being so close to them as they had been on the train, or in the carriages coming through the main gates, for an extended period of time.

She _did_ think that Lyra was a bit too _blasé_ about people causing physical harm to others, and especially to herself. It was _also_ a key point in her argument that they hadn't done any lasting damage, Lyra had been beaten far worse _by her own father_ — they hadn't even left any lasting _scars_, since she'd managed to get herself partially _eaten_ by a bloody _lethifold _a bare month and a half later!

Sometimes, Hermione didn't know whether she wanted to _throttle_ Lyra, or never let her out of her sight, lest she go off and get herself killed and not even bother telling Hermione that she'd done something ridiculously dangerous and absurd or even patently impossible, like getting herself _stuck between planes_ in the first place, or running off to join in a bloody riot, or hunting the _fucking_ spiders...

But that was a _different_ discussion. One which Hermione didn't want to have again because, well, she really didn't want Lyra to tell her when she did (or recently had done) something that might kill her. She _really_ wanted Lyra _not_ to do things that might kill her, and she knew that Lyra would consider that to be an unreasonable thing to ask of her. She'd just kiss her and grin and say Hermione worried too much, she was very difficult to kill, and then skip off to do something _else_ absurdly dangerous, like pestering Angelos or Bellatrix, or trying to sneak onto the Durmstrang ship to see how it worked, or dueling with Sirius — Hermione _knew_ they used deadly force in their sparring matches, Gin had told her as much, as _well_ as that Sirius had almost taken Lyra's wand arm off last time...

The _point_ was, while Lyra probably didn't consider maiming someone's wand hand to be nearly as bad as Hermione or the Twins or anyone _sane_ would, there was also _no_ way she could possibly think that _that_ was a proportionate response to McLaggan's chronic arse-grabbing and innuendo-making, which probably didn't even register to her as problematic. If he'd tried to grab _Lyra's_ arse, she'd probably have broken his fingers — Harry had told her about their 'adventure' going clubbing in Los Angeles — but she'd probably expect _Chelsea _to do the same if it bothered her so much. She certainly wouldn't intervene on her behalf, and to have done so just because Hermione had been annoyed was _ridiculous, _even for Lyra.

So, maybe she hadn't done it.

...Except, that didn't _really_ make it better, because Hermione still thought she _might_ have, and _that_ was the problem.

That, and that she didn't know how to bring it up without being a bit...accusatory, about the whole thing. Which she really didn't want to be, especially if she was _wrong_ — her face still burned at the memory of accusing Lyra of faking the attack on herself at the end of last term — but she didn't know how to– how to bring it up more...casually. Lyra already hadn't said anything about McLaggan when he'd come up in conversation earlier today, there was no guarantee she'd admit to anything even if Hermione were to bring up having seen him in hospital. Not that she thought Lyra would _lie_ to her, but...well, she hadn't mentioned that she was sleeping with Sylvia for _months_, because she thought it had nothing to do with Hermione.

Of course, if the Twins were right, this had _everything_ to do with Hermione, but somehow, if she were to say, _oh, Lyra, did you know someone shoved McLaggan's right hand into his own arse-cheek _she didn't really think Lyra would volunteer that she'd done it, or that she'd done it _for Hermione_. She _knew_ that the idea of her _doing things_ for Hermione — cursing Malfoy and buying her books and so on — made her uncomfortable (though of course she couldn't understand _why_). If Hermione asked her directly (as in, _did you do that to McLaggan, and if so, _why_?!_) she was sure Lyra would tell her, she just didn't think Lyra would tell her if she _didn't_ ask directly.

And if she asked directly, she rather felt like she'd be implying that she thought Lyra was the sort of person who might just go around casually maiming people — which, while perhaps not inaccurate, seemed like a bad thing to think about her girlfriend, even if she _had_ had the potential to grow up to become Bellatrix bloody Lestrange. (The fact that Lyra almost certainly wouldn't mind the implication didn't make it better.) And _worse_, if Lyra _hadn't_ done it, or hadn't done it _for Hermione_, and Hermione implied that she thought she might have done, there was a very real possibility that she'd be giving her ideas — ideas like _I could do nice things for Maïa by doing awful things to people who annoy her_ or _Maïa would appreciate it if more people who annoyed her ended up leaving Hogwarts for whatever reason._ (She was sure McLaggan wouldn't be staying here — if he couldn't do magic anymore, what would be the point of attending classes?)

"Er...Hermione? Earth to Granger?"

"Oh! Mandy, Lisa! Hi!"

"Alright there?" Lisa asked, causing Hermione to pay attention to her surroundings for the first time in several minutes. Right. She was just standing awkwardly in front of the Doorknocker, thinking about Lyra and McLaggan's arse.

"Er...yes, sorry. Just...lost in thought. What was the riddle again?"

"I shave every day, yet my beard stays the same. What am I?" the Eagle repeated. (Presumably — she hadn't heard it at all the first time.)

"A barber," Mandy answered immediately. "What are you doing up here, Hermione?" she asked, leading the way into the Ravenclaws' Common Room again.

"Oh, I was looking for Prefect Prince. The Weasleys said she was up here somewhere."

"What time is it?" Lisa asked, apparently rhetorically, since she immediately cast a tempus charm. "I think she'll be running the Potions Study Group, right?"

Hermione frowned. It still rather irked her, knowing that every House _except_ Gryffindor had organised study groups to ensure that the younger students didn't suffer from the invariably poor instruction in Potions, History, and, until this year, Defence. She hadn't even _heard_ about them until she'd started time-turning with Lyra last year, but honestly, it would have been _so_ helpful to have a couple of older students around to answer questions about Potions Theory in first year. Yes, she _had_ made it through the class just fine with her outside reading, but she would swear Harry, Ron, and Neville hadn't had the slightest idea _why_ they did _anything_ they did in Potions until the beginning of third year. (Which was when _Snape_ started teaching Potions Theory, _supposedly_ because he wanted them to get the basics of magical theory — _wizardry_ theory — down in Transfiguration and Charms before inundating them with an entirely _different_ way of thinking about Magic — Hermione suspected he just hated answering stupid questions, and thought that if he waited a couple of years he'd get fewer.)

"Yeah, first-years' parlour. They should be almost done, though, the firsties have Transfiguration this afternoon."

_Right, good timing, then._

Or, maybe not _such_ good timing, Hermione was nearly bowled over by the entirety of the Ravenclaw first-year class halfway up the stairs. When she managed to fight her way past the tide, the room was empty. She had to chase Mallory up another two levels before she finally caught her.

"Hi! Mallory!" she said, slightly out of breath.

"Er...Granger? Hermione, right?"

"Yes, hi! Do you have a minute?"

"I suppose. What is it?" she asked, as though she couldn't for the life of her imagine why Hermione had chased her down.

"Ah. You know the Weasley Twins?" She immediately wanted to kick herself, of _course_ she knew the Weasley Twins.

Mallory groaned. "What have they done _now_?"

"Oh! No, it's nothing like that! They suggested that you might be a good addition to the Hogwarts Team for the first task, this Saturday."

"Oh, did they, now?" she asked, faintly amused.

"Yes," Hermione said firmly. "So, would you like to be on the Team?"

Mallory apparently needed a couple of minutes to consider it, because instead of answering, she said, "I thought Black was our Champion. And Potter," the implied question obviously being _why are _you _inviting me to join the Team?_

Hermione entirely failed to suppress the huff of annoyance which occurred whenever she was forced to recall her girlfriend's entirely unconcerned attitude toward this whole Triwizard business. It wasn't just _this event_, she was apparently convinced that it should be no trouble at all to put on a decent showing in the Tournament without putting forth any real _effort_ — or at least no more than she put into anything else. (Which could actually be an _absurd_ degree of effort, but was _hardly_ consistent.) To say she wasn't exactly taking it as seriously as Hermione would if _she_ were the Champion, with the eyes of the entire school on her, was putting it lightly. "They are, yes. Lyra will be leading an offensive group, and Harry will be on aerial defence. They've delegated the ground defence to me."

"And what, precisely, would we — myself hypothetically included — be defending?"

By the time Hermione was halfway through explaining what they knew about the Game, and who else had already been recruited for the Team, she was fairly certain that Mallory's participation was no longer hypothetical. By the time she had _finished_, there was a mischievous sparkle in the seventh-year's eyes, and she'd taken a seat on a nearby coffee table to begin scribbling down notes.

"Did Black's informant happen to mention how much time we would be given to prepare our ground?"

"Ah...no. Does that mean you're in?"

"Of course." She looked up from her notes, apparently surprised to see Hermione still hovering near the stairs. "Did you have somewhere to be? Sit down." She waved her quill rather impatiently at the nearest armchair. "Generally speaking, teams for this sort of thing get at least a few minutes to prepare their own defences before the game begins — up to an hour or so, depending on how quickly they want it to progress. The longer you give the teams to dig in, the harder it is to steal their treasure or flag or whatever.

"I _suspect_ that the organisers will want to kick off the first event of the Tournament with a bang, so if they do give us time, it probably won't be very much. Five, ten minutes, maybe fifteen. But we should have an incremental plan in place for the fortification process — things we can do _immediately_, in the event that we have veela fire-walking in ten seconds after we reach our starting positions, but then a series of additional defences we can enact in the event that they do give us time, dependent on how much time we have.

"I'll need to go out and take a few readings of the magical currents in the field and make at least a _rough_ map of the arena— Do we know _where_ our base will be located, precisely? Are they assigned, or do we get to choose our hill?"

"No, and I have no idea."

Mallory nodded, making a few more notes. "We should still go scout out the area, in case we _do_ have the choice. Are you busy at the moment?"

"Er...no?"

"Good, let's go." When Hermione hesitated, somewhat taken aback by her decisiveness, she added, "You _do_ know where the arena is, right?"

"Well, yes—" Lyra had mentioned it was in the Forest, near the paddock Hagrid had used for their very memorable first Care lesson.

"Well, I don't, so do you want my help or not?" She raised an eyebrow at Hermione in a very Snape-like, challenging expression, leaving her to chase her down the stairs.

"Let's talk resources," the prefect said, casting an anti-eavesdropping charm around them as soon as they left Ravenclaw Tower. "Ash isn't going to be any help with the defences, and I imagine Weasley will also be fully occupied as soon as they blow the whistle—"

"If they do give us time to set up first, though," Hermione said, warming to the older girl as the shock of her enthusiasm began to wear off, "the Twins' strongest casting area is illusion and glamoury. They're also rather good at environmental transfiguration — you know, turning the floor of an entire corridor to ice, and the like."

"Ooh! That's good, I _like_ that! Throw some conjured oil on the ice to make it extra-slippery and hide it under an illusion or two, could make a good first line of defence — like a moat, but _much_ easier to effect within a minute or two. And relatively simple to work into a self-sustaining circuit, too."

"That's geomantic wardcrafting, right?" Hermione was only vaguely aware of the concept because—

"Yeah, like what Black did to the World Cup stadium. I thought Ashe might crack a rib trying not to laugh when she explained exactly why Public Works can't get rid of the palings she tied into it."

Yes, that. "If we have time, she can probably do something similar for our base. Otherwise...I suppose I could probably get a few rune-cast defensive palings in place, at least long enough to mock up physical defences." Simple ones, obviously, but Hermione was confident she could cast them without blowing up their entire team.

"You can do runic casting?"

"No need to sound so surprised," Hermione said, bristling slightly at her skeptical tone.

"Aren't you a fourth-year? And muggleborn?"

Er...right. Maybe it was a bit surprising, to people who _didn't_ spend all of their time around _Lyra_ and _Harry_, that a fourth-year would be practising that sort of magic. Though, "What does my being muggleborn have to do with _anything_?"

"Well, for one thing, it means you couldn't _possibly_ have even _heard _of Runic Casting until three years ago, and for another, it means you hardly would have had the access to resources you'd need to try to learn it independently — presumably, not until Black showed up last year. And since you wouldn't have been able to practise it over the summer, what with it being a Class Three Dark Art, and the Ministry and the press looking for any excuse to haul you over the flames to take the heat off Dumbledore... Colour me impressed, Granger."

"Oh." Hermione felt her face grow warm. "I'm not nearly as good as Lyra, but yes, I can do basic runic casting."

"Basic like a really big _protego_ and a few explosive fire-charms, or basic like..." She scribbled something in her notebook, passing it over to Hermione. "Could you do something like that?"

There were only nine symbols, but Hermione didn't recognise any of them. "Er...maybe. What does it do?"

"The first three runes divert streams from nearby magical currents and pool them to create a temporary, artificial reservoir. The fourth is a linking-direction element. Take this power and use it to do whatever is specified in the second clause, which in this case is a description of a very basic earthen rampart — sinks a one-meter ditch around a circular area ten meters in diameter, twelve trough to trough, the displaced soil pulled inward to raise the enclosed area to form a defensive bowl."

Oh. Could she just _casually build a hill-fort_ for them, with just a handful of runes, just go ahead and leverage ambient magic to move literally _tonnes _of dirt around, and...

Actually, despite the ridiculous forces involved, she didn't see any reason she couldn't — magic was just _absurd_ sometimes. "Well, I've never tried anything like this, and certainly not on this _scale_, but...maybe? It might take a while, and I probably wouldn't be able to hold a defensive paling as well..."

"It does, yeah. That last symbol is a limiting-regulating function, controls the rate at which magic from the reservoir is pulled into the spell, and therefore how quickly it takes effect. The way I've written it, it would take about ten minutes or so. Really shouldn't do it any faster, makes it too easy to accidentally bury bystanders, and since all our people will be around...yeah. Jones and I, and maybe Weasley, can set up shield-palings and booby-traps, take care of the more active defences if you don't have time to finish before they call _start_. Your thief will obviously want to be outside, and we shouldn't draw attention to her by having her help with the defences anyway, and Moreau's about as good at Defence as Ash, so who else does that leave us?"

"Theo Nott. And we haven't decided on the final defender, yet."

"Hmm...maybe someone who's into elementalism?"

"We'll keep that in mind." Honestly, Hermione had no idea who they ought to bring on to fill the final slot, she was rather hoping Lyra or Blaise would have a suggestion.

Mallory nodded, moving on as they strode into the trees. "Does Nott have any particular areas of expertise?"

* * *

_Someone asked in a comment somewhere (I lost track of it) how Mallory and Sev are related. They're first cousins. Mallory's father is Sev's mother's younger brother. They never really met before she started school because Sev's not a Prince, and the Death Eaters wouldn't have talked about him like he and Zorian were related. She knew about him as the Spy, not as her cousin. —Leigha_

_It amuses me that "Hermione is in **so** much trouble" is, like, the Hermione/Lyra thematic sentence xD_

_Right, one more putting the team chapter left, woo. —Lysandra_


	45. Hogwarts 15 — The Gardener

"So, Cedric's in, and we asked Enyo Seran, too," Harry announced, falling into a chair beside the girls' warded table in the Gryffindor Common Room. His wind-tousled hair and relaxed grin suggested that he and the other two fliers had spent some time in the air together after they'd been recruited, already working out tactics, perhaps.

"We got Ryan to help with communications and the Twins for intelligence, and Theo volunteered to play defence. I recruited Bell and Rowle for offence."

"Er... Wasn't Rowle one of the..._you know_...?" Harry asked.

"Yes, and? All the more reason to recruit him to get his arse whipped by a bunch of Durmstrangers," Lyra said lightly, ignoring her girlfriend's suspicious, sidelong glance.

"Uh-_huh_." Skepticism practically rolled off the boy, eyes narrowed in similar suspicion. "And he just...agreed to be cannon-fodder for you?"

"I wouldn't say _cannon-fodder_, but, yeah? Harry, this is the _Triwizard Tournament_. Even if he _does_ think it's suspicious as hell I picked him, he's not going to say _no_. And he _is_ a good fighter. I mean, best case scenario, we're going to be engaging a dozen other mages in direct combat, and one of them's a Cæciné. I wouldn't have suggested him if I didn't think he could at least keep a handful of them busy."

Hermione worried at her lower lip for a moment. "Do you want Theo for offence? Mallory and I weren't really sure what his strengths are, so we didn't assign him a particular role in our provisional strategy, and—"

"No." Lyra shrugged. "Theo's too _reactive_ for offence. Besides, you'll need him if some of the other teams' fighters get past us. Which, they probably will. I mean, I'm good, but I don't think I can keep all however many of them occupied, even with help. At least a few will probably withdraw and go on to attack you while the others keep us busy. Speaking of which, did you finish filling out the roster?"

Hermione sighed, but let the topic go. "Blaise said the only person worth asking on your list was Nick, but he's in. And Violet Moreau — I didn't realise she's still a student, I thought she was one of Madam Pomfrey's trainees, but she's actually a seventh-year— Did you..." she trailed off, obviously thinking better of whatever question she'd been about to ask.

"Did I what?" Lyra asked, nothing in her tone or posture suggesting that she might think there was something significant in the half-asked question sparked by Hermione's visit to the Hospital Wing.

"Never mind, we can talk about it later," the other girl decided, after another brief hesitation. "I also asked Mallory — Mallory Prince, the Ravenclaw prefect. The twins suggested her, she's apparently very good at laying traps and things like that. She said she already had some ideas, we went out to scout the site and got a bit distracted discussing what we might be able to do with runic casting—"

"It's always the quiet ones," Harry muttered. "So...that's it, then?"

"No, we still need one more."

"Did you forget to count Astoria? Damn, she _is_ good..." Harry joked, smirking at her.

"No, we're only going to have one of the twins in the arena. The other one's going to watch from the stands and use their weird twin telepathy to keep us up to date on what they're showing on the screens."

"That is...positively _devious_." He sounded almost admiring of that, and more than a little surprised.

Lyra rolled her eyes. "Yeah, but probably not much of an advantage. I hear Durmstrang's got a wind-watcher _and_ a weather witch to make sure the wind goes where they need it. So piggy-backing on the elves' surveillance is pretty much just going to ensure we're not at a massive _dis_advantage. Anyway, we need one more person to help hold down the fort."

"Well, don't look at _me_, I don't know anyone's hidden talents or hobbies, or whatever," Hermione said defensively. "Mallory suggested someone with an elemental specialty, but I don't know..."

"Yeah, well, you already eliminated all of _my_ suggestions, so."

"What about Neville?" Harry suggested, heading off the incipient bickering.

"Neville?" Lyra echoed. "Neville _Longbottom_?"

"Uh, yeah? How many Nevilles do you know?"

"Er...none I'd think would be particularly good at war games," Hermione noted.

"I dunno, I just thought...he's getting really good at that plant magic stuff Cassie told him to look into, and we _are_ going to be out _in the Forest_, can't hurt having someone around who can like...do plant-y things."

Lyra snorted at _plant-y things_, but nodded. "...Good point. Plus, he _is_ a fucking Longbottom. And Aggie's pretty traditional. I bet he's been taught plenty about history and strategy, even if he's a shite _fighter_. Could be a good second-in-command for you, Maïa."

She shrugged. "I suppose I don't have any better ideas. Do you want to ask him, Harry, or should I?"

፠

Neville was alone in the boys' dorm room when Harry returned, working on a Charms essay for Miss Parr, who had quickly become his favourite professor after Professor Sprout and Miss Lovegood. (He tried to remember to call her _Cassie_ to her face, because she'd asked them to, but it was hard because, well, she was _Castalia Lovegood_, anyone who _didn't_ have an enormous degree of respect for her and the service she did for the world, going around fighting Dark Lords like she did, had to have something wrong with their head.)

Professor Sprout had always been kind and patient with him, and it didn't hurt at _all_ that her subject was his favourite, and Miss Lovegood had identified him as an earth-speaker and put him in touch with Quinn — which might be the best thing that had ever happened to him, not only because Quinn had been teaching him _how to talk to plants_, but also because being an earth-speaker was much more respectable in Gran's eyes than simply being shite at both wizardry _and_ witchcraft. He _was_ pretty good at Charms, but Quinn had pointed out that there were a lot of similarities between earth-speaking and basic physical charm effects, asking light or gravity or whatever to act differently than it was naturally inclined to do, which was a bloody _brilliant_ way to think about it.

Professor Flitwick was _fine_, Neville didn't _dislike_ him, but he could be a bit _distractible_ when he was explaining things. Miss Parr was, he thought, the best actual _teacher_ he'd ever had, in terms of the actual teaching part. She was patient and thorough like Professor Sprout, and would explain things multiple times in different ways to make sure everyone understood how and why each spell worked the way it did, and her instructions were always clear and easy to follow, and she came up with fun activities to demonstrate basic principles, like the day they'd all gotten to make a flying carpet using different charms to take care of the actual _flying_ part and compared how well they worked and the little differences between them and stuff.

Almost everyone loved her — the exceptions in their class being Lyra, who thought she went too slowly and oversimplified the theory stuff too much, and Zach Smith, because he'd been such an obnoxious arse she'd demonstrated anti-gravity charms on all of his things, and he hadn't managed to get his inkwell back without spilling it all over himself. And then she'd made him write an essay on _why_ he'd spilled ink all over everything. Twice, because the first time he'd written a scathing tirade about her being an abusive, shite professor and clearly it hadn't been _his_ fault she'd levitated his things, and stuck copies up all over the school, and _Professor Sprout_ had given him detention for a _month_ for disrespecting a teacher, which was _great_, because Zach Smith was a _jerk_ and a _bully_, and disrespected _all_ of the teachers all the time (except maybe Snape, because who would dare?) and he _always_ got away with it because he never actually hexed anyone or anything like that, he was just generally _awful_. (Neville might actually dislike him more than Draco Malfoy, which was saying a _lot_.)

And, well...she was _pretty_ and _nice_ and _smart_ (without being a condescending jerk about it) and not even that much older than them, since she'd only been out of school a few years, and so what if Neville might have a bit of a crush on her, he definitely wasn't the only one.

There were a lot more fanciable teachers around, now — the youngest witch on staff before the apprentices had come in this year had been Professor Sinistra, and she _was _kind of pretty in a vaguely intimidating way, but she'd been a Slytherin in school, and rumour had it she'd helped Snape poison students he didn't like. Miss Lovegood obviously had a fair few admirers — there were rumours she ran around the forest naked hunting acromantulae, Neville knew at least half a dozen boys had been caught out of bounds trying to catch her at it — and Miss McGowan, Professor Vector's apprentice, who was obviously completely oblivious to the number of blokes who'd tried to transfer into Arithmancy just to watch her lecture about esoteric maths in her "scandalously revealing" muggle blouses. (They were perfectly normal blouses in the muggle world, according to Harry.) A few blokes even spent most of their lessons staring at Miss Stacey, even if they wouldn't admit it because she was a vampire.

But Neville thought Miss Parr was the prettiest. And definitely the nicest. He might _admire_ Miss Lovegood, but he certainly wasn't fantasising about snogging her. (And everyone knew she didn't fancy blokes, anyway. She was dating Miss Stacey, and she'd told them all about her affair with Lily Evans when they were in school — Harry had been _so_ red.) So, if he happened to spend an extra hour on his Charms essays now and then, in the hopes that she'd notice him and maybe give him one of those proud little smiles and use one of his points as an example in class, well. Could anyone blame him?

(No. They could not. Seamus and Dean had tried to transfer into Arithmancy, so they could take all their teasing and shove it.)

"Hey, Nev, got a minute?"

"Ah, sure?" he answered, rather surprised. Not that Harry was talking to him, they actually talked a lot more now that Mrs. Weasley had pulled Ron out of school — that had been as much a surprise to Neville as anyone, he hadn't realised— Well, he _had_ realised that Ron was doing terribly in their lessons, but he didn't think it was _that_ bad. There was just something weird about his tone. Slightly apprehensive, like he had a question and he wasn't sure what Neville would say, or even what he would think about being asked. Not unlike Dean asking Gin Weasley to go to Hogsmeade with him over Samhain.

(She'd turned him down flat, with no explanation or excuse or _anything_, which was just..._harsh_. Dean seemed to think she'd been horribly unfair to him, but Neville didn't know what else he could possibly have expected from Gin. _Most_ of the third-year girls would've said yes, just because he was a _fourth_-year, and older men were _cool_, but Gin was all hard and sharp and serious and there had never been any chance that she would've said _yes_, or even let him down easy.)

"You know about the first task this Saturday, right?"

"Er...yes? Harry, I think _everyone_ knows about the Triwizard Tournament."

"Well, yeah, but. You know it's like this war game thing, out in the Forest? We have to put together a team and it's going to be like a capture the flag thing?"

"O...kay?" He hadn't known, no, but he had no idea what it might have to do with _him_. Or why Harry was being so bloody _weird_ at the moment.

Either he'd thought that loudly enough that Harry had overheard it, or he just realised how ridiculous he was being, because he gave a little huff. "Do you want to be on the Team, Neville?"

_What?_ Neville's brain stuttered to a halt. No, seriously, _what_?

Was he like, dreaming, or something? Harry hadn't _really_ just asked him to be on his team for a bloody _war game_, out of _everyone in the entire school_ he could _possibly_ have asked...

But he had. And he was still talking. "I know it's kind of last minute, but—"

"Are you, I don't know, messing with me, or something?" Except that didn't really seem like the sort of thing Harry would do. Maybe, like, one of the Weasley twins _disguised_ as Harry, or—

"Um, no? I mean, I just thought maybe you'd want to, and, you know, it's out _in the Forest_, and you've been doing that whole plant magic thing, right? So I thought maybe you'd be able to help with like, fort...stuff."

Except, it had to be the real Harry, because that was just the most _Harry Potter_ answer. There was _no_ way a polyjuiced Weasley would have been able to say that straight-faced.

(Honestly, _fort...stuff_?)

Harry was almost as awkward as Neville. It was actually kind of hard to say which of them was more awkward, because Harry didn't know nearly as much about their world as Neville, but he was actually good at magic — magic other people had actually heard of — and— Actually, Neville wouldn't be surprised if Harry was only asking him because he didn't _know_ anyone, and just wanted a few people around he actually _did_ know, and trusted to have his back, no matter _how_ useless they were almost _certain_ to be in a bloody war game. Neville wasn't any kind of fighter, "plant magic" or no. That _had_ to be it.

"Look, Harry... Did you talk to Lyra about this?" There was _no_ way Lyra Black had agreed that _he_ should—

"Yes. She okayed it. Said, and I quote, 'He _is_ a fucking Longbottom. And Aggie's pretty traditional. I bet he's been taught plenty about history and strategy, even if he's a shite _fighter_.' Suggested you could help Maïa command the fort or base camp or whatever."

Well— That was just— _Yes_, he was a Longbottom, and _yes_, Gran had made sure he had a traditional education, complete with loads of useless lessons on military strategy and magical battles won and lost over the centuries, but— "Never mind, I forgot, Lyra's insane. It doesn't matter if I know everything there is to know about commanding a fort — which I don't — have you ever _seen_ a war game, Harry?"

"Um...no?"

Of course he hadn't. "Look. You can't just– just ask people to be in this because we're your friends, and you think Lyra should be able to handle the offence single-handedly, or whatever— The other teams are going to take this _deadly_ seriously— _Arte Cæciné_ is one of the Beauxbatons champions! I know she looks like just another cute little French girl—" Seamus's entirely superficial impression of her — he didn't follow duelling _at all_. "—but she's _scary_. Like, _Lyra_-scary."

"I'm aware of that, actually," Harry inserted, vaguely amused.

Which meant he wasn't taking this seriously. Neville pressed on. "And magical battles can be _intense_, even your _worst_ people need to be able to hold their own in a fight if— They won't be able to use illegal spells, or _hopefully_ anything potentially lethal, but have you ever _seen_ mages actually _fight_?"

"I _was_ at the World Cup, Nev."

"A riot is _not_ a battle, Harry. Not unless you were still in the thick of it when the Aurors started closing in and the Death Eaters had to start fighting for their lives, which, you're still alive, so I'm guessing you weren't. _Riots_ are a bunch of untrained, usually drunk wizards blowing off steam by cursing people indiscriminately. _Battles_ are _trained_ mages attacking each other intelligently, _strategically_, with the intent to kill, or at least disable, any enemy in their way. Magical battles are terrifying and _devastating_, and the kind of people the other teams are going to field — people like Lyra and Cæciné — are _going_ to treat this like a real battle, because, and I cannot _possibly_ overstate this— that's what a war game _is_! Practising for a real battle, as realistically as possible! Do you have _any_ idea the kind of damage mages can do to each other, when we're _really_ trying to hurt each other?"

Harry gave him an annoyed little frown. "Do _you_? It's not like I've never seen Lyra and Sirius spar before, and if you think either of them are going to avoid throwing around lethal spells when _that's what makes it fun_, you've clearly never met either of them." Well...okay, that was a point, maybe. He wouldn't actually expect anything else from the House of Black, but that was all the more reason Harry should _know_ Neville would just be a liability in a real fight. "And I'm not asking you because you're my friend, I'm asking because we _know_ we're out-classed in a head-on fight. We're going heavy on defence, which means fortifying the hell out of our base, and booby-trapping everything we possibly can, and oh, hey, I know a guy who might be able to ask vines to tie people up, or grow a defensive thorn-hedge, or, I don't know, summon a bunch of triffids to attack the enemies from behind, or something."

"...Oh."

"Yeah, _oh_. I can't guarantee that they won't try to send veela fire-walking in, or something, but we've got a healer, and a couple of older students and Theo Nott to handle any actual curse-casting. _Your_ job would be to help Maïa and Mallory Prince stop anyone _else_ getting anywhere _near_ our flag."

Well...Neville might actually be able to do that. Not summoning triffids, and they probably wouldn't have time to grow an entire hedge, but he could definitely help make trip-lines and grow briars on conjured walls and that sort of thing. Maybe urge a few sleep-poppies to bloom out of season, spread their soporific pollen around the other teams' camps, or something? If he wanted to risk actually _killing_ someone, like everyone else probably would be, he could pull a couple of Strangling Kudzu out of the canopy to rout the enemies' defensive positions... (Obviously he wouldn't do something like that unless he _really_ had to, but.) And Quinn might have some ideas, too.

"So, do you want to be on the Team?" Harry asked again. "Or not?"

A nervous, excited grin sneaked its way onto his face, despite his reservations. "Yeah, I think I do."

"Brill."

* * *

So, that's everyone, then. Next chapter is written, but we're going to try to build up a bit of a buffer so we don't end up having to put a massive pause in the middle of the action of the task, so it'll probably be a couple of weeks. In the meantime, have fun wondering exactly what's going to happen (I know I am). —Leigha


	46. Serious Political Maneuvering

The restaurant was small but busy, its decor tastefully minimal, if a bit..._overwhelmingly bright_, splashes of sunny yellow and poppy red on the otherwise stark, white-painted walls. Even the most upscale muggle venues seemed to be falling prey to the new trend of such gaudy use of colour lately. (Not that she made a habit of frequenting such places, but it was impossible to not notice, even passing by on the street.) This particular establishment boasted a French-trained Italian chef, and was nestled into what was once likely a café, overlooking the Garonne at the very heart of Toulouse. It was newly opened and very exclusive. The fact that her dinner companion had managed to secure a reservation, presumably on short notice, spoke highly of her connections in at least _one_ world. The atmosphere was light and refined, exactly the sort of dining environment she would have considered most conducive to a productive conversation about poetry and philosophy, in a former life. (To discuss local or even international politics directly with anyone not already an established ally suggested a certain lack of class. Not that anyone would _say_ as much, but it _would_ be assumed, and certain avenues of conversation consequently closed.)

That was, of course, some time ago.

Druella Rosier had not engaged in serious political maneuvering for nearly twenty years now. Returning to her own family after the "suspicious disappearance" of her husband — murdered, of course, by the daughter who was always more _his_ than _hers_ — had released her from the obligations of a society wife, and Uncle Luc had taken pity on the miserable, neurotic wreck she had become in the course of doing her duty to the family, leaving her home to become a bloody broodmare for the House of Black (despite her own loudly voiced opposition to the twin ideals of marriage and motherhood). He had promised on the day of her wedding that this was the final duty he would ever ask of her, and when she had returned from her exile he had remained true to his word, leaving her free, for the first time in her life, to do as she pleased rather than as she was expected to do. Free to dismiss the opinions of Society as entirely inconsequential if she so chose, to pursue her own interests, rather than advancing the interests of her House (whether that might be the Rosiers or the Blacks they had sold her to).

It had taken her some time to become accustomed to the idea, but she had, upon reflection, come to appreciate that freedom. (_Immensely_.)

And politics, while once her refuge from the madness and misery which was her life (her husband, her _children_), was not an area of particular interest to her. The delicate, dangerous dance was one at which she had learned to excel, and she was certain she would never — _could_ never — forget the steps, but she would be pleased if she were never again obliged to take to the floor.

Instead she spent her days, now, surrounded by history, researching the impact of certain choices on the course of events which shaped their timeline, exploring the nature of temporal canalisation and the budding and branching of new universes. She kept abreast of the latest advancements in arithmancy and enchanting, of course, particularly those related to time travel and extra-planar exploration, and occasionally attended academic conferences on the subject. She _had_, after all, written a mastery thesis in that field. But history was her true passion. It was flattering to be asked to speak on arithmancy, but far more so to have been invited to discuss the mainstream human perception of the Italic Vampire Wars with a (relatively) young vampire exploring the history of relations between their peoples.

According to Grace, the mutual acquaintance who had arranged this meeting, Hela had decided to return to her now-classic anthropological treatment on werewolves, expanding upon it by placing their existence within the greater context of historical European human–non-human conflicts. Which was rather a tall order, a project which could take _decades_ to complete, but one Druella found to be a fascinating proposal. She hoped she would still be alive to read the vampire's conclusions, when she finally reached them.

Or rather, she _had_ hoped as much.

When she actually arrived at the restaurant, threading through the tables behind the host, that hope died a painful, fiery death. Almost literally — the sight of her dinner companion, who was most certainly _not_ a vampire scholar, throwing her back to January of Nineteen Sixty-Nine.

She'd been standing beside her husband's dying memorial pyre, long after the guests (family, mostly, to conceal from the broader public the fact that there had been no body to burn) had departed, smoke irritating her eyes and the mourning veil draped over her face tickling her nose, such trivial physical inconveniences entirely overshadowed by low-key panic over the fact that she had _no idea_ what to do with her life now. She didn't know how to be a widow! That and the fear that she knew _exactly_ what had happened to her husband. The fear that, if Bellatrix had finally decided to rid herself of the parents she had always hated, Dru might not have much life _left_ to her.

She was still embarrassed by the frightened yelp which had escaped her when her daughter materialised out of the flickering shadows. Bellatrix had smirked at her, enjoying her fear, that same triumphant expression she always wore when she succeeded in forcing a reaction from the woman who did her level best to be as _non_-reactive as possible. One should not fear one's own children, but it had been years since Druella had been able to look her eldest in the eye without a shiver trailing down her spine.

She recognised the eyes of a killer when she saw them.

Being _boring_, _uninteresting_, was her best defence against the girl — the _woman_ — who had tormented her for the better part of two decades by then, both as an insufferably hyperactive child and as she grew into a ruthless, intelligent, terrifyingly competent battlemage — a Dark Lady in all but name, though most people had been strangely reluctant to acknowledge that fact when the witch in question was barely nineteen years old. Despite her relationship with the Dark Lord and her role in his..._organisation_ being an open secret.

፠

"_Dru. Good evening." Calm. Pleasant. Slightly amused. (_Smug._) As though they weren't standing beside what ought to have been her father's ashes._

"_Bellatrix."_

_The girl held her peace for a long moment, staring at the glowing coals as though mesmerised. When she finally spoke, it was in that same too-calm, too-pleasant tone. "You know, don't you?"_

"_I'm afraid you'll have to be more specific, Bellatrix."_

"_You know that I killed Cygnus." Light, pleasant — they could be discussing the bloody _weather _from her tone. A spot of holiday patricide? Hardly a matter of any consequence. _

"_...Yes. I suppose I do."_

"_Do you know _why_?" She turned to face her mother then, sharp, dark eyes fixed on hers, the better to judge her honesty when she answered._

"_No," she said, as evenly as she could, doing her utmost to maintain a flat, disinterested mask. A twitch of the girl's lips said she didn't quite manage it. She should have taken another Calming Draught after dinner..._

"_For Andromeda. I made her a promise when we were children..." _

_She trailed off, staring at the coals again, coaxing them back to life with a touch of wandless magic. Druella did her best to hold her tongue, but curiosity got the better of her. "What _promise_?"_

"_She promised that if he ever used the Imperius on her, if he ever touched her like he touched me, or made her touch him, she would tell me. And I promised that I would kill him for her." She turned to look at Dru again, forcing _her _to see the flat, entirely unamused expression which accompanied her words. It was a face she imagined very few people had seen. Dru herself could not recall any occasion on which Bellatrix wasn't at least _slightly _amused by the idiocy surrounding herself. "You know I keep my promises, Dru."_

"_What do you mean, if he touched her? Are you saying—"_

"_That he used the Imperius to rape her? Yes." Her eyes narrowed as she examined Dru's entirely legitimate shock. "You didn't know."_

_Of _course _she hadn't! How Bellatrix could think that she might have and yet done nothing herself... "You said _like he touched you_..."_

"_I did, yes. Though I wouldn't have _expected _you to know about _that_. It _did _go on for nearly a decade, but it ended years ago—" Implying, what? That it had _begun _when she was— "—and children are so tedious, always making up stories for attention. Little wonder you didn't believe me, I suppose." Six. She had been six, the one time she had ever attempted to complain to Druella about Cygnus, and his approach to her education. "Though I should probably thank you for that. You might have helped me escape Cygnus, but given the most likely alternative, well... I suspect that Arcturus would have resorted to legilimency to bring me to heel, well before I grew old enough to defend myself. Trapped me as the scared, broken little girl I was back then, crippled my mind and forced me into the mold of a society lady, sold me off to some boring little lordling to bear his children and run his estate at the earliest opportunity..." She gave her mother a brilliant grin, madness lurking in the sparkling, fire-lit depths of her eyes. "I think we can all agree that would've been a _damn _shame."_

_Somehow, Druella suspected that Bellatrix would have burnt the House of Black to the ground before she submitted to such a fate, compulsions or no. "I— I'm sorry, Bellatrix. I– I didn't know, I thought, when you said—"_

"_You thought that it was entirely understandable that he'd use the Imperius to control a feral little hellion such as myself, and if I wanted him to stop I ought to learn to behave myself. Yes, I remember." Had _Bellatrix _taken a Calming Draught? Or did she simply know how positively_ unnerving _that slightly absent, detached amusement was?_

"_Well, _yes_, but— I didn't know about— If you'd told me he _touched _you... I thought he was just– just making you sit still and pay attention to your lessons, or—" Honestly, if _she _could cast that particular curse, she might have been tempted to use it on the six-year-old Bellatrix herself, if only to get through a single music lesson without the girl reducing her to tears of frustration. It wasn't even that she hadn't wanted to learn, or hadn't any talent, she'd just refused to sit still and concentrate for more than a handful of minutes at a stretch._

"_I was _five _the first time, Dru. It wasn't the sucking his dick part that terrified me — it was the _being forced to like it _part. Happy birthday to me." Dru felt ill, the world spinning around her. "Anyway, why are you apologising? I just said I ought to thank you, didn't I? If I'd had a mother to rely on, I wouldn't be the witch I am today, so."_

_Dru couldn't respond to that, too focused on not becoming physically ill at the thought of her husband... She'd known he was a horrible, sadistic man, but to do _that_, to a _child — _to his _own _child... She didn't even _like _children, but—_

_Bella shrugged lightly, and changed the subject. "You can go home, now."_

"_W-what?"_

"_Home. To the Rosiers? You know, those people whose company you consider superior to that of the Blacks in every conceivable way?" She shot the older witch a smirk and a side-long glance. "Don't pretend you haven't been miserable here. I may be _terrible _at people, but even I know that much. And Meda's far too soft for her own good." Oh, gods and Powers, he'd done it to _Andromeda_, too... "She doesn't want to see you suffer. So. You're free, Dru. You're welcome. Go _home_." _

"_I— Just like that? Just..._leave_?" She would be lying if she said she hadn't dreamed of doing exactly that for _years _when she'd first come here, but at some point the idea had become..._

"_...Yes?" Of course, Bellatrix wouldn't understand how terrifying the idea of simply walking away from her entire life — away from everyone and everything she knew — might be, even if she _hated _it. "I suppose you don't have to go back to the Rosiers if you don't want to. You could travel or something. See the world. Become a concert pianist or something. Make a life you actually enjoy. Just, do me a favour?"_

"_What's that?" she asked, only vaguely aware of her words through her shock._

_Bellatrix chuckled, as though she hadn't just upset the very foundations of Druella's world, suggesting that she could simply _leave — Was _it a suggestion? If she _stayed_, would she find herself joining Cygnus on the other side of the Veil? — or perhaps as though it was slightly adorable that Dru had never considered that option herself. "Stop wasting your potential hostessing tea parties and pretending you haven't got a brain. I don't know, go get a mastery or _six_, we both know you could. Even if serious scholarship isn't particularly ladylike."_

፠

Her hair was blonde and _short_, and she was wearing muggle clothing. (As suited the venue — Druella had herself worn dress robes which might pass for a muggle frock, albeit one slightly eccentric in taste). The blouse baring pale, unscarred — _glamoured_ — shoulders was even _blue_, a brilliant, cerulean blue, rather than black and silver or red. (Bellatrix had never cared for fashion — she had ordered her tailor to make _all_ of her clothing match from the age of _nine_, rather than put any effort into selecting complementary elements herself.) She cocked her head to one side as her mother arrived with that too-quick, too-precise motion and sudden lack thereof which was characteristic of vampires, natural or otherwise, and her pallor would almost certainly convince anyone who did not know her that it was entirely possible she had not seen the sun for decades, if ever (the glamour was only hiding her scars, she always had been deathly pale), but the smirk she wore was unmistakable.

As was her voice when she said, "Master Rosier, I see you decided to take my advice after all. I presume you do indeed find academia more satisfying than hostessing endless rounds of meaningless social tedium?"

She had, yes, which Bellatrix _should_ know, she _had_ been working on her Arithmancy mastery before the war ended — though it was possible, she supposed, that the girl hadn't paid her enough attention in their occasional, brief interactions at Rosier Family gatherings to realise that she hadn't still been indulging herself wandering through the lands of Assyria and Babylon and Carthage and Kush, seeing for herself places she'd only read about until then, learning their stories as their people — common people, living in the historical shadows of great empires — recalled them.

"_Bellatrix_," she hissed, wary of being overheard, even here, in an entirely muggle space. Her eldest daughter was, after all, supposed to be dead — or at the very least on the run from the authorities and having the good grace to _pretend_ to be dead. Certainly not inviting Druella to dinner under false pretences! "_Why_ are you impersonating a _vampire_?!"

"_Hmm_, less than three seconds from recognition to disapproval. I should probably be surprised, but I'm not." She flipped an enchanted token across the table to Dru, a carved lead coin slightly larger than a sickle. The avoidance charm anchored to it was simple, but would certainly be sufficient to deflect the muggles' attention from their conversation. "And if you must know, it wasn't _my_ idea. I'm quite certain I never indicated that Hela was a vampire at any point in the Observations. Some bright spark simply seems to have decided that she _must_ have been while I was..._away_. As though it's patently _impossible_ for a human to observe the werewolf transformation unmolested, honestly."

It _was_. Bellatrix quite simply _wasn't human_. (Despite having been there for her birth, and every miserable hour leading up to it, Dru occasionally wondered if she ever had been.) And that smirk said she was well aware of that fact — that she considered herself _better_ than human, thanks ever so. For someone so generally unsubtle, her sense of humour always had been _shockingly_ dry.

"While you were _away_." That was one way to refer to her incarceration, Druella supposed. Thinking on which, she had to note that Bella looked surprisingly _well_ for having been in prison only months ago. Not that she expected the dementors to have much effect on her, but from the pictures she'd seen of Sirius in the papers when _he_ had escaped, she would have expected Bella to be more wasted, to look older, rather than as though not a day had passed since Druella had last seen her face-to-face, in the autumn of Nineteen Seventy-Nine. (She wasn't certain she wanted to know how her daughter had managed that — some horrifying dark ritual, probably.) "And why, precisely, have you decided to come _back_?"

"Oh, well, I imagine you've heard about Lyra by this point...?"

"The name is familiar, yes." She had most recently heard it mentioned in relation to the Triwizard Tournament which was being revived at Hogwarts this year. That Bellatrix's "daughter" had managed to get herself selected as the Champion for her school despite being too young, and therefore technically not qualified according to the rules the judges had set, was not surprising in the least.

Before that, it had appeared in a letter from her grandson, unsubtly probing for information on his presumed cousin. Dru seemed to recall that, by the time her girls were fourteen, their minds had developed sufficiently to hold a conversation like the near-adults they were — certainly enough to write a letter requesting such information more obliquely, when they had plenty of time to choose their words with care. She hadn't seen him in _years_, of course, but Draco, she suspected, might be a bit _slow_. As further evidenced by the fact that he now feared for his life because he had apparently done something to vex a girl who could murder him in cold blood without batting an eyelash. Both in having done something to antagonise a girl he believed to be _Bellatrix's clone_ — even if he hadn't known that at the time, he would have to be blind, deaf, and possibly part _troll_ to have missed that she was _dangerous_ — _and_ in fearing for his life.

If Lyra were anything like Bellatrix, she wouldn't kill him for something as trivial as humiliating her. Dru would actually be willing to wager it had raised her opinion of him that he'd managed it.

Narcissa also seemed to be entirely unconcerned about the situation. She and Druella had corresponded fairly regularly over the years — more so, recently. Dru had simply _had_ to ask what the _hell_ was going on over there, with Sirius handing the Blacks' seat over to a _muggle_, and Cissa not only approving of this, but _allying_ with the woman to make an unmistakable stand against any lingering influence de Mort might yet hold. (_Your move, Alexander_ indeed!)

Circumstances being what they were, she hadn't had many options, Druella supposed, but her favourite daughter actually seemed to _like_ the muggle woman who had so eloquently eviscerated the majority of _every_ bloc in the Wizengamot in her very first session. In Narcissa's opinion, between the efforts of this American muggle and her former sister's influence, Sirius might actually manage to revive the House of Black from the brink of extinction (yet again) — which eventuality Druella was _certain_ the remainder of the British nobility were _especially_ thrilled about. (Many a Lord had breathed a sigh of relief to realise that the Blacks were _gone_, Uncle Luc among them.)

As Narcissa was somewhat unreasonably fond of her pointy, blond offspring, and the boy was pathetically unable to keep his opinions and trivial, childish news to himself — meaning she certainly was aware of the situation — Dru could only assume that there was no danger of Bellatrix's "daughter" actually murdering him for (as his letter had implied) arranging for some trivial humiliation months ago at the hands of her peers.

And before _that_, the name Lyra Black had filtered to her from a dozen or more other sources, friends and colleagues all curious to know whether she knew anything about the girl and her mysterious origins. It had become especially bothersome in the wake of the Quidditch World Cup riot, and the announcement that "Druella's granddaughter" would likely be inducted into the Order of Merlin for the role she had played in the arrest of the instigators thereof, but it had begun even before she had apparently "admitted" that Bellatrix was her "mother". She did, after all, bear an uncanny resemblance to the infamous Blackheart. (Albeit not at the moment — Bellatrix dressed appropriately, _as a muggle_, rather than in dueling robes or some fantastical, fae-inspired costume entirely unsuited to the occasion, with a halo of short, loose, Rosier-blonde curls softening the sharp angles of her face, and not a weapon in sight, looked very little like herself.)

"Rumour has it the girl is a blood-alchemy clone of you, raised by a travelling cursebreaker, or more plausibly that moon-cursed mongrel you insisted on associating with in the War—" "Fenrir Greyback" was possibly the _worst_ of all Bella's former comrades — not only a werewolf, but a commoner and a _muggle_ at that! Most of de Mort's followers had at least had _some_ degree of class, but the werewolf was a churlish _boor._ He was crass and rude, deliberately so, and clearly hated all of them — mages and good, upstanding people in general. Dru was quite convinced that half the reason Bellatrix had gone to such trouble integrating herself into his "pack" had been to offend her own peers on every imaginable level. "—and one or more British nobles exiled after having been reduced to his ilk. I presume none of it is true."

Bellatrix gave her a coy smile. "Is it really so far outside the bounds of credulity that I might have wanted to have a child to carry on the legacy of the House, in lieu of other acceptable candidates?"

Was that supposed to be a joke? "Yes," she said drily.

While the role she had played in educating her younger siblings and cousins, going well beyond the bare minimum effort required of her, suggested that Bellatrix _did_ like children, so far as Druella knew her eldest daughter had always had as little familial ambition as she did. She _distinctly_ recalled fifteen-year-old Bellatrix challenging several of the more hide-bound Lords of British Noble Houses to public honour duels over their attempts to arrange her marriage into said Houses. ("Playing Atalanta," she'd called it.) If she recalled _correctly_, Bellatrix had given her reasoning to be that _I have more important things to do than get married and have children, Pater. If you persist in this asinine attempt to use my body as a token to seal some alliance between our House and some other, lesser family, I swear by the bloody Dark, I _will _start killing the idiots who think their sons and grandsons worthy of my non-existent affections._ (Which was an attitude Dru still rather regretted that she herself had not had the skill to carry off when the subject of her own marriage was first proposed.)

The smirk only broadened, suggesting that she was in fact joking, even as she noted that, "The whole reproduction process wouldn't be _nearly_ as much of an imposition if I made someone else carry and care for the little nightmare throughout the most _boring_ years."

Well, at least she _recognised_ how awful a child she'd been. Dru sniffed. "As though you would trust the raising of any hypothetical child of yours to anyone outside the House of Black."

Quite honestly, Druella wasn't certain whether there was anyone outside of the House of Black who was _capable _of raising any version of Bellatrix. Cygnus might have been a horrible, sadistic monster, but Bellatrix had been a horrible, irrepressible ball of manic energy. She likely would have run rough-shod over the would-be authority figures in any other House.

"Yes, well, as I told a certain blood alchemist when last we spoke, if I were to do such a thing, I would certainly consider it worth my while to track down Cassiopeia and charge her with the task. She'd probably even enjoy it. I seem to recall her being the only adult in the House who actually liked me, so."

"Yes, well, Cassiopeia always was a bit..._odd_." Perhaps the single greatest understatement Druella had made since leaving politics. The youngest Black metamorph had, by the time Dru married into the Family, spent the majority of her time living with the outcasts on the edge of society in abject poverty — simply because _they_ didn't look at her strangely for _having wings_ — and the vast majority of her days pretending to be some sort of visiting fae. Though that wasn't _nearly_ as strange as her affection for her insufferable, then-seven-years-old great-niece. "Have you forgotten that I _taught _you how to mislead people with the truth?"

"No. And, you're right, she's not my daughter. She's a _wandering star_." She slipped into Gobbledygook for a moment to pronounce the word.

Dru winced slightly. Most humans were such poor speakers of the primary (local) goblin tongue, it was all one could ask for that they even sound remotely intelligible. Bella's accent had _never_ been _that_ painfully bad — she was the only one of the girls who shared Druella's gift for languages — but that just meant it was even more obvious that she chose to speak like a common warrior rather than with the more precise enunciation of a poet or orator — which Dru _knew_ she could, because she had taught her the thrice-cursed language in the first place! And if Dru said _anything_ about her sounding like a bloody _commoner_, she would imitate Narcissa, dropping all of the clicks entirely. Though Dru rather doubted Narcissa even _knew_ the term the goblins used to refer to a visitor...from...a different..._timeline_.

..._What?_ No, that was the wrong question. _How?!_

Bellatrix sniggered at her shock. "She's a more academic, less destructive version of me, trained as a cursebreaker by Ciardha Monroe, from Nineteen Sixty-Three of a universe that diverged from ours around Grindelwald's revolution. You'd probably actually enjoy talking to her about enchanting. Or the nature of the multiverse, for that matter. Though, fair warning, she's more annoyingly energetic than I was."

Druella raised an eyebrow about the implication that she _would_ go out of her way to meet the girl, eventually. She had no intention of doing so at the moment, wandering star or not. If the girl wanted to see _her_, Dru was certain she would simply show up one day (see: Bellatrix's presence on the other side of the table). But fascinating as dimension-hopping was, she was hardly masochistic enough to subject herself to the company of _any_ fourteen-year-old version of Bellatrix. She _had_, of course, been mature enough by then to hold an intelligent conversation — for years, in fact — she simply hadn't been mature enough to do so when she could so easily bait Druella into a pointless argument instead. And just being in the same room for five minutes, listening to her endless, animated, flow-of-consciousness chatter and watching her fidget or pace in circles because she simply _hated_ just _sitting still_ could be _exhausting_. (Seeing her so very still on the other side of the table was almost unnerving in and of itself.) "You'll forgive my doubting that such a thing is possible."

Bellatrix smirked. "She's well on her way to becoming an Avatar of Eris, turned herself into shadow-kin on a whim, and is currently coming into her power, so she's in that peak-Madness period, and channelling more magic than I was at that point, so generally at a higher baseline. She was just blooded in the World Cup riot, so currently both a bit full of herself and not entirely accustomed to repressing the urge to try to bait people into trying to kill her — _i.e._ more intentionally annoying than usual, and has no experience with occlumency to speak of. _Zee_ was having trouble managing her volatility over the summer." And Mirabella Zabini had been exposed to Bella's insanity for decades.

Perhaps Dru stood corrected. Wasn't _that_ a horrifying thought.

"Say what you will about Thom, but he _did_ teach me to control myself. Though I suppose she did make it to the age of fourteen without killing anyone—" Only an accomplishment when compared to having a record with the DLE for killing a man in "self-defence" at the age of _eleven_. "—_and_ she's so far managed to do so only under socially-laudable circumstances, so maybe it's a wash? Oh! Also, I would be remiss if I failed to inform you that she has a muggleborn girlfriend." Which suggested that attitudes toward muggleborns were significantly different in "Lyra's" home universe...which _would_ make sense if the populist uprising here hadn't successfully toppled the old Council... _No, focus, Druella_. "She likes to make a point of it, trying to be provocative."

Alongside the usual touch of amusement, there was a hint of condescension in her tone. A suggestion along the lines of, _it's kind of adorable_. Somewhat hypocritically — Dru seemed to recall that at that age (and every other) Bellatrix had _also_ gone out of her way to be provocative at every available opportunity. Including by doing nearly _exactly_ the same thing with the Zabini girl. "I presume she simply couldn't find an entirely inappropriate foreign commoner from a _magical _family to bring home?"

Bellatrix shrugged. "She claims this Granger girl is actually clever enough to keep up. Not that _Sirius_ minds, anyway, he _did_ appoint the girl's mother as his Wizengamot proxy. The _funny_ part is, aside from her intelligence — and the fact that she wants to have a _romantic relationship_ with _Lyra_ — this girl is supposedly perfectly normal. I'm predicting confusion and frustration all around."

Yes, Druella could see how Bellatrix would find that amusing. Dru herself was morbidly curious about what "Lyra" thought a romantic relationship entailed. She was quite certain that when _this_ Bellatrix was that age, _she_ had thought it meant letting Mirabella Zabini be as physically affectionate as she liked, and/or doing anything de Mort or the Zabini girl asked of her — certainly in part because she liked them, but also largely because she had nothing better to do with her time and no ambitions of her own. (For all Druella knew, she might _still_ think that, despite obviously realising that "normal" people would disagree.)

"Anyway, Eris dragged Lyra here to reverse the compulsions Tom used to domesticate me as a child—" _Wait, de Mort had done _WHAT?! "—which they did manage, though it was a miserable experience, you might have heard the Aurors moved me to an Unspeakable facility—"

Okay, leaving aside for a moment that placing compulsions on a young child was Unforgivable because they were _impossible_ to reverse, "_Bellatrix!_"

"Yes?"

"Are you telling me that nameless, thrice-cursed _bastard_ _mind-molded_ you as a child?!"

She shrugged. "Yes? Is this surprising? I mean, you have _met_ Tom, right? And I know you tried to avoid me as much as possible when I was five, but—"

"You could at least make an effort to act appropriately offended over someone using Unforgivable magic to affect your very _personality_, Bellatrix!"

"Why? It's not like he can do it _again_, and in case you've forgotten, using Unforgivables to try to moderate my behaviour wasn't exactly _uncommon_ when I was a child." Dru flinched at the oblique reference to Cygnus's crimes against her. "Besides, Lyra's offended enough for both of us. I told her she could kill him if she likes, I'm just not terribly interested in helping. I mean, I'm not a fan of deep compulsions on principle, but having recently re-lived _literally all of my memories_, I can't really say that I find his enthralling me to be terribly different from the House brainwashing me or Eris _dis_-enthralling me. And I think the compulsions mostly affected my priorities, anyway. Maybe tipped me a bit more toward destruction than chaos, made me more willing to actually _listen_ to him, but honestly, if I'd met Tom when I was seven or eight rather than five, I'm not sure how different our relationship would ultimately have turned out to be. After all, _Zee_ didn't enthrall me, and Lyra obviously has a notable degree of respect for Tom's counterpart from her own universe — she didn't meet him until she went to school.

"In any event, the D.L.E. used my temporary memory loss and general disorientation as an excuse to let the Mind Division have a crack at getting into my head, and you know how I feel about the Department of Mysteries. So, obviously, I left."

She shrugged, catching a server's eye, entirely oblivious to Druella's momentary inability to comprehend..._anything_. She'd known, of course, that de Mort had been a devious, _ruthless_ fucker, but _enthralling a child?_ Some things were simply beyond the pale! And for Bellatrix _not_ to want some sort of vengeance for his trespass was simply... She'd _gone to Azkaban_ for him! Even if she didn't mind him using her to run his bloody war, Dru would think she would care about the _thirteen years_ she'd lost just _sitting around_...

She couldn't even say what she ordered, aside from a bottle of the house red — a sweet Shiraz, apparently. "It _is_ a bit difficult to move about as Bellatrix Black, though. Hazard of being a notorious war criminal, I suppose. So, since I've been staying with Mickey anyway, I decided to revive the Hela identity to make it easier to avoid Meda's daughter while I organise the Resistance into an _actual_ revolutionary organisation."

Druella made a concerted effort to concentrate on the conversation at hand, rather than abuses the would-be Dark Lord had committed nearly forty years ago.

That...wasn't actually surprising, she found, focusing on her daughter's words. If she had had to guess what the _hell_ Bellatrix was doing on the Continent, that she was attempting to lay the necessary groundwork to overthrow the Statute of Secrecy was not entirely outside the realm of projects she might plausibly have suggested. She _had_ spent the majority of her life fighting for a Dark revolution, after all, and outside of her decision to endure her incarceration rather than simply _leave _the dementor-infested island — which sounded rather absurd, but then so did casually escaping one of Mysteries' experimental facilities after thirteen years in a prison cell and what sounded like a significant degree of mental trauma — Druella had never known her to simply _stop_ and _relax_. In fact, she wasn't entirely certain that Bellatrix was constitutionally _capable_ of relaxing. She suspected that Azkaban was her way of paying some obscure penance for failing to do the impossible for de Mort, willingly submitting to the torture that was unrelenting _boredom_, rather than any sort of actual _break_.

She was equally unsurprised that Bellatrix had taken up with that bloody werewolf again. She _would_ say that she could not comprehend the basis of their eventual friendship — not that she had been witness to that development, but an entirely baffled and repulsed Narcissa had written to her of it — but it was obvious enough given a moment's thought. Bellatrix, much like Cassiopeia, had always been somewhat...inhuman. Unable to relate. If she truly _had_ written Hela's Observations — and despite the marked dissimilarities between those essays and her earlier forays into theoretical arithmancy, Druella could think of no reason for her to lie about having done so — it would seem that she found the underlying curse-borne instincts of "the Wolf" to be more comprehensible than the complexities of human motivation. (The sympathy with which she had described the phenomenon was one of the details which had led a significant proportion of the academic community to believe Hela a ritually-created vampire, her apparent empathy presumably predicated on her familiarity with the eternal hunger for _life_ which afflicted them.)

Druella really had been _absurdly_ slow to realise that the metamorph had likely recognised the difficulties the unique aspects of the sacrifice entailed in the Blacks' Covenant and their Choice might cause earlier than the rest of them. She had almost certainly been attempting to _help_ her great-niece, in her own peculiar way, by introducing her to the creatures and degenerates beyond the boundaries of polite society. A community held together by their mutual struggle for subsistence was likely far more rational in Bella's eyes than _the senseless, superfluous frivolities of Society_, as she called their elaborate displays of wealth and power. Druella had, on occasion, regretted banning Cassiopeia from her daughters' lives, fearing that she would be an _even worse_ influence on Bellatrix — by the time she _had_ realised that the metamorph might have been an invaluable asset to the collective efforts of the House to manage the impossibly rebellious child, she had moved on.

In any case, it was hardly more surprising that Bellatrix had returned to the familiar savagery of her pet werewolves than that she had chosen to focus her time and energies on another absurdly ambitious revolutionary goal. But... "Andromeda has a daughter?"

That she hadn't known. She had made a point of _not caring_ about the life of her middle child, the cruel, selfish girl who had disowned _her _and run off to the Americas rather than do her duty to the House and marry as she was bid. (It was possible that this was _also_ an option she wished she had had the moxie to seize, when Uncle Luc had insisted on Cygnus, but that didn't mean that it didn't still hurt.) She had _liked_ Andromeda! Quiet, biddable, soft-hearted and clever; _careful_, and so very, very good at the political dances which Bella had never even deigned to learn — she had been a proper little lady from the age of seven or eight. Bellatrix had been _Cygnus's_ daughter. Even more so than Narcissa, whom Druella had really only come to know as an adult, Andromeda had been _hers_.

And she had _left_.

"Yes. A metamorph." _Really?_ "She's about twenty years old, trained as an Auror straight out of school, though she's obviously not any better at it than...well, _any_ of the other Blacks who've attempted to serve law and order. Do you remember Alastor Moody? mad ex- Black Cloak?"

"Vaguely."

"Yes, well. He's convinced Meda's Nymphadora—" She'd named her _Nymphadora_? Perhaps she wasn't quite so set on abandoning them after all... If she wrote to her, Dru wondered, would she answer? "—to join him in his entirely extralegal attempt to track me down and kill me. Which on the one hand is vaguely amusing. I might be somewhat out of practice now — never really appreciated having an army of recruits around to train against until they were gone — but I'm _pretty sure_ I can still handle a single baby Auror and a half-lame old warlock in direct combat. But on the other hand, having an investigator following one around does make it a bit difficult to convince your average would-be revolutionary to take the step from simply talking about how shite the Statute is to actually _doing something_ about it. Even if she _is_ an obvious vigilante, no resources or official support, she could still pass critical information to local law enforcement. All the more easily given the metamorph thing, I suppose. So until I manage to turn her, I'll be conducting my more sensitive business as Hela. It's all very, well, Black Cloaks and Warlocks." Her eyes tipped toward the ceiling, a wry smile inviting Dru to share in her daughter's exasperated amusement.

Somehow, Dru found she didn't feel like laughing. "And what is that business, precisely?" she asked, making a concerted effort to draw her attention back to the conversation at hand, rather than the former daughter she hadn't seen since January of Nineteen Seventy-One.

Grace had obviously set her up, though it was impossible to say whether the metamorph knew who Hela truly was. She was somehow related to the Zabini girl who had so firmly attached herself to Bellatrix at Hogwarts, after all, it was hardly out of the question that they had met through Mirabella. But then, it was equally possible she'd simply gotten caught up in this Resistance conspiracy Bella appeared to be brewing. Her primary persona these days was a notorious jewel thief, it wasn't impossible that they'd met in the course of the attempts she assumed Bellatrix was making to establish a new network of contacts outside the reach of the law. (_Druella_ had met the metamorph through a friend of a colleague she'd been collaborating with a few years ago — Grace was one of those people who seemed to know _everyone_, somehow.) It was equally uncertain whether she knew that this was, in fact, a set-up. Bellatrix _was _an unnaturally good occlumens, and did make a surprisingly convincing vampire. Grace _could_ legitimately believe that "Hela" was nothing more than the harmless scholar she appeared.

"Ah, well, I need a favour."

"Why does that not surprise me?"

"Presumably because you know I have as little interest in catching up and making small-talk about our various relatives as you do." Dru couldn't help but let slip a small smile at that. It was true, one of the few things Bellatrix seemed to have inherited from her was her lack of patience for banal idiocy. (Looking back on those years, Druella was far more surprised that she hadn't entirely cracked attempting to be the perfect Society Lady than she was at how _incredibly miserable_ it had made her.) "I understand that Monsieur Moreau of the Confederation's diplomatic corp will be hosting a certain gala event the weekend after next. I need an invitation."

Druella suppressed the urge to groan. Marcel Moreau was the director of a sub-department within the diplomatic bureaucracy of the CIS. Specifically, the sub-department which dealt with the various non-human clans and nations which shared territory with the predominantly human CIS states. He was hosting a party on behalf of a candidate running for election for some regional office or another — almost certainly not something that he ought to be doing as a man in his position, but the CIS was as corrupt as the British Ministry in its own way. There was to be an art auction as well as the usual dinner, dancing, and desperately dull political speeches which were to be expected at such things.

Druella herself was no longer involved in politics, but one of her former apprentices had somehow been pressed into arranging for a panel of suitably respectable academics to talk about the merits of various pieces up for auction, and she never had been able to tell Vivienne _no_, despite her habit of allowing herself to be drawn into _far_ too many committees and organisations such as the one to which Moreau and his pet politician belonged. So, despite the fact that Druella was hardly an expert on the art of animated portraiture, she had agreed to go make some suitably vague comments about the works on offer.

"Do I even want to know why _you_ want to attend this particular social event?"

"Is the election campaign of a staunch human-supremacist—" Was he really? She hadn't even looked into the designated beneficiary of the event... "—hosted by a so-called diplomat who actively opposes and suppresses the anti-Stautarian sentiments expressed by members of his own office not the sort of thing a scholar writing a book on the history of human–non-human relations might be interested in? Especially one who, as a vampire, has very little insight into the human perspective on such topics, and wishes to present a well-rounded exploration of the—"

"Bellatrix," Druella interrupted firmly, trying not to smile at her perfectly innocent expression, her impression of a wide-eyed, naïve academic spot-on, though it did contrast rather strangely with her sharp, vampiric body language. (Not entirely an act, she realised, if somewhat more abrupt than her usual gestures — generally such sharp, sudden movements were unexpected breaks in the fluid, graceful, near-constant motion which had eventually replaced her constant fidgeting.) "As entertaining as it might be to watch you pretend to be a vampire historian, we both know that you have as little patience for society events as you do for small talk."

Her daughter gave her an unrepentant grin. "I'm going to kill him, obviously. Moreau. And you should call me Hela."

For a long moment Dru simply stared at the witch calmly sitting across from her, sipping at her wine as though she _hadn't_ just admitted that she was planning to murder a relatively important member of the international community — in his own home, in the middle of a political gala, while disguised as a vampire historian. It was too easy to forget, sometimes, that her daughter was entirely _mad_. "I suppose it won't do any good to remind you that assassination is hardly the answer to all of life's problems."

"Shockingly enough, I am aware of that fact. Sometimes, for example, one is forced to ask one's estranged mother for an invitation to an enormously tedious social function. Highly-placed diplomats tend to have relatively sophisticated wards, you see, which assassination is entirely incapable of circumventing — it's terribly inconvenient when one is trying to assassinate someone on the other side of them."

"And sometimes, one is forced to tell one's" (_terrifying_) "estranged daughter that one refuses to be associated, even indirectly, with the death of inconvenient politicians."

Bellatrix smirked at her. "You won't be. No more than any other horrified onlooker, at least."

"I don't suppose it would do any good, either, to remind you that an apparent vampire assassinating an influential and well-regarded diplomat is hardly likely to advance your cause."

"Do you _really_ think that I would be so clumsy as to suggest to the authorities that Moreau's death might not have been entirely natural? Far less allow them to connect it to _me_. I _am_ fairly skilled at this sort of thing, you know. After all, Arcturus never managed to figure out that I was killing off the cadet branches of the House. _Thom_ didn't even realise that I was responsible for eliminating the majority of his original Inner Circle, and he was actually aware of the full extent of my abilities."

"You did _what?!_"

"Well, I wasn't about to let anyone else be a closer, more trusted advisor to him, simply because they were older, more experienced, and had known him longer. And before you say it, yes, I realise that was incredibly immature of me, but I _was_ fifteen at the time, and Thom was _mine_." She shrugged.

"Not _that!_" Though it was somewhat disturbing that Bellatrix had apparently been _so_ obsessed with her Master that she'd killed everyone too near to him out of some twisted jealousy. Even on a scale of her daughter's other mad exploits. In fact, it was _nearly_ as disturbing as the fact that he had _apparently_ used compulsions on her to shape her personality as a child — which of _course_ she hardly considered worthy of comment, skimming over the detail as though it hardly _mattered_, when so far as Dru was aware breaking free of such compulsions was supposed to be _impossible_ — and her newfound objectivity on the subject of Thom de Mort. "You _murdered the House of Black_?!"

Bellatrix's head twitched a few degrees to one side again, her face blankly disinterested. A silent, _Is this important?_ "Well, not _all_ of it. But yes."

"_Why?!_"

_Sigh_. "Because I was young and stupid, and Thom asked me to prove that I was loyal to the Cause above even the Family. Besides, most of them were hardly worthy of the name. The House was overdue for a culling." Druella was absolutely certain her horror was showing on her face, but she found she couldn't force it back. Bellatrix gave her a rather rueful smirk, suggesting that she did, in fact, understand that this, both the action and her callous discussion of it, was a bit shocking. "Yes, Lyra isn't very happy with me over that, either. But you didn't even _like_ the Blacks. What do _you_ care?"

She _hadn't_ liked the Blacks. They were a savage, bloodthirsty pack of barbarians at best _pretending_ to be civilised people, and at worst...well, _Bellatrix_. She hadn't realised exactly how sick they were until she'd already been wed to Cygnus for an entire year — they had been married on Yule, so their first anniversary had been marked by her introduction to their tradition of bloody _human sacrifice_— What sort of monsters actually _did_ that?! And when she _had_, she'd seriously considered betraying them to the Aurors over it. (The fact that nothing would likely come of such an attempt aside from her own demotion from wife to blood traitor — and likely subsequent murder — was the only thing which had stopped her.)

But _they were your_ family_, Bellatrix! I thought _you _cared about that! About your _duty _to them, if nothing else_.

Though she realised almost as soon as she thought it that Bellatrix had considered her primary duty as the First Daughter of the House to be to its _children_. Their _parents_ she would likely have found it only too easy to justify killing, given the way the Blacks habitually treated each successive generation — in much the same way, she supposed, that she had disposed of Cygnus for proving himself a danger to Andromeda.

It took her a moment to find her voice, but when she did, it was a matter of habit to fall into a cool, disapproving tone, unimpressed and equally unintimidated. (Like most terrifying, predatory creatures, Bellatrix was far more likely to attack if she sensed weakness — she knew, of course, that Druella was scared of her, but she at least respected that Dru tried to pretend otherwise. She thought it was funny, because of course she did, this was Bellatrix.) "Has anyone told you lately that you're a monster, Bellatrix?"

Bellatrix grinned at her, showing _far_ too many teeth. "'_Audacia solum namque nos separat,_'" she quoted. _Daring alone divides monsters from men _— she always had liked Montreve, Druella recalled suddenly. "But no, not _recently_. Not since...Tuesday? Maybe Wednesday." So, four days. Or maybe three. Not recently at all. "Mickey's mellowed in his old age. Doesn't want me teaching the pups how to hunt." She clicked her tongue in mockery of his disapproval. "So disappointing."

"Oh, yes, how _dreadful_, that he doesn't want you teaching _children_ how to _kill people_. Do you even hear yourself when you talk, Bellatrix?"

"Yes, actually. I'm even aware that _other_ people hear me when I talk. One might almost say that's the entire point of the exercise. I'm just saying, for a violent werewolf revolutionary, he's gone awfully soft over the past fifteen years. Anyway, my point was, I've been making assassinations look like natural deaths since I was little more than a child myself, under the noses of men far more suspicious than any investigator the Swiss are likely to assign to it. I'm well aware that if Hela is linked to Moreau's death it will be highly counter-productive, which is why I have no intention of being caught. You have nothing to worry about in terms of getting a bit of blood on your name by association. And if you _are_ somehow implicated, you can simply tell them I coerced you— Oh, thank you." She cut herself off as the waiter approached with their food.

Apparently Druella had ordered the quail. Bellatrix, of course, had ordered the langoustine, likely simply to annoy her. Regardless of trends in muggle haute cuisine or the degree of effort put into preparing it, lobster was not and would never be anything other than a cheap sea-insect masquerading as proper _food_. Even miniature lobsters. Perhaps _especially_ miniature lobsters.

"In any case," Bellatrix resumed as the young man retreated, "denying me an invitation will hardly stop me removing Monsieur Moreau from his current appointment. Doing so at this event in particular, however, offers an opportunity to draw attention to the Confederation's hypocrisy as well. Appointing a man who supports human supremacy to manage diplomatic relations with non-human groups throughout Europe? _Imagine_ the _scandal_. _And_ the host dropping dead in the middle of the party will almost certainly mean you get to leave early. So, there's that."

Well, yes, there _was_ that, she supposed. She sighed. "Very well. You may accompany me to the gala." More because she knew Bella _would_ simply assassinate the man on some other occasion if she truly wanted him dead than because it would get Dru out of the party earlier, but she couldn't say that wasn't a nice side benefit. "Formal dress. We can meet at my offices beforehand." She assumed that Bellatrix knew she'd taken a teaching position at _le Collège de Sorcellerie_ in Paris, given that she'd concocted this particular ruse to enlist Dru's assistance. "Say, seven."

"Lovely." Her daughter smirked, then raised an eyebrow at her. "Well, that was easier than I anticipated. Honestly, I expected that conversation to last us through dessert. I see Mickey's not the only one who's gone soft while I was away."

"Yes, well, I find not worrying about whether one's children are off starting wars and the like tends to make life far less stressful."

"Oh, of course. And retiring from the tea parlours and ballrooms full of petty bitches which make up the majority of polite Society has had no impact whatsoever on your general state of mind, I'm sure. So! What have you been working on lately?" she asked, changing the subject brightly.

"Hmm, potential points of historical deviation over the course of the muggles' Great War. Nothing that would interest you, I'm sure."

Druella was not unaware of Bellatrix's contributions to the development of modern time-magic. Her interest, however, had always been more on the front of _exploring alternate timelines_ — she must be positively _green_ over Lyra actually having managed to escape her own universe — while Druella found the nature of time itself and its development to be far more fascinating. There _was_ an area of overlap there, of course. But it was poor conversational form to seem too enthusiastic about discussing one's own interests, especially obscure, technical, academic interests which involved a good deal of scrying and therefore uncertainty, and had a tendency to bore potential dinner companions to tears. (Even if it would serve Bellatrix right for the horrors she had put Druella through over the years.)

"Oh, I don't know, I've been developing an appreciation for muggle warfare lately. Though I have to say, I prefer the sequel. The American campaign in Vietnam sounds like it was fun, too. Did you ever work out a solution to the focal uncertainty problem you discussed in your thesis? Because I have to say, it _might_ be more a problem of relativity and perspective, in which case—"

"You read my thesis?" Well, her _first_ thesis — she hadn't actually gotten _six_ masteries, as Bella had once facetiously suggested she might, but she had taken one in History and one in Political Philosophy in addition to Arithmancy.

"Was I not supposed to? It was referenced in Clarence Weigand's most recent essay on temporal and dimensional mechanics, and I had a free afternoon... Surely you didn't expect me _not_ to catch up on the work that's been done in my field over the past decade and a half."

Well, _no_, it was just..._odd_, holding a civil, academic conversation with _Bellatrix_, of all people. If she started wanting to talk about Classical composers, Dru was going to start questioning whether someone was impersonating _Bellatrix_ impersonating a vampire scholar. (That did, in fact, sound like the sort of thing Cassiopeia would find amusing.)

Bella, of course, gave her a look which suggested _Dru_ was the one acting peculiarly, before returning to her own academic ramblings (completely eschewing any trappings of polite conversation, because _politeness is for people who are afraid of offending people, Dru_). "Anyway, I'm starting to think that the direction we _should_ have taken with the Sandstone Project ought to have been extra-planar, rather than creating skip-backs exclusively in the fourth dimension of this plane — not that the time-turner was completely _useless_, but, well, even if the blibbering idiots have managed nothing else in the past fifteen years, I think the Unspeakables have proven that there's only so far that direction will take us..."

* * *

['_Audacia solum namque nos separat'_]

_"Daring alone separates us." It's possible I have too much fun coming up with poetry for various characters to quote. This would be from the same poet Lyra quoted at Dumbledore over the summer, when they were trading vaguely threatening bits of Latin. The 'monsters from men' Dru added would be from its context within the poem._

_Dru, like Lyra at the beginning of the story, is unaware that she's an omniglot. She thinks she has a good ear for accents and a knack for picking up grammar, and memorising vocabulary is more or less the same as memorising anything else. Which largely comes down to her learning most of the languages she speaks from books, rather than by speaking to others directly. Bella gets her intelligence from her as well, and her sense of timing. They have similar views on children and homemaking, and share an interest in enchanting and arithmancy. (As well as a loathing of small talk.) They actually got along fairly well after Dru went back to the Rosiers, though they only saw each other a few times a year, at various Rosier family functions._

_Much of Lyra's underestimation of her own abilities and the absurdly high standards she holds are due to Dru being kind of absurd, and Lyra comparing herself to Dru when she was very young. Obviously it's not weird that she speaks seven (non-magical) languages fluently and however many others somewhat less than fluently — most Blacks speak at least five, and she doesn't actually know how many Dru can read. Sure, she's clever, but compared to Dru and Meda, she's not exactly a genius. And compared to someone who could have been a world-class musician in another life, she really **is **shite at piano._

_Please join me in imagining Siri and Lyra at three in the morning deciding WE SHOULD START A COVER BAND! With Sirius as lead vocalist/frontman/guitar and Lyra on drums/back-up vocals, because obviously. (Edit: Alex, Michael Cavan's assistant, is their bassist, and they call themselves the Flying Motorbikes. This may actually need to be a thing. Edit 2: This is now a thing. Just wrote it into a later chapter xD)_

_Please ignore my previous note on chapter timing. I wanted this to be a thing Sirius could already know about in his next scene, but I fucked up the timeline. This chapter has to have happened sometime in the first week of November at the earliest, so the gala probably hasn't happened yet._

_—Leigha_


	47. Welcome to Hogwarts — Sébastienne Moreau

Sébastienne Moreau stepped out of the floo, as the green flames faded took a quick look around the room. And froze.

It was a pub. It was _really_ a pub. When she'd been looking up public floo grates at Castle White, she'd noticed the only one in Hogsmeade was at a place called the Three Broomsticks. Now, it was sort of absurd for a magical settlement as important as Hogsmeade to only have one public hook-up, especially during a public spectacle like the Triwizard Tournament — she'd think they'd at least set up a temporary one around the big events. She'd assumed this Three Broomsticks was a public meeting hall of some kind, but she'd asked the attendant, who'd informed her it was a pub. A pub with rooms for rent, the only hotel of any appreciable scale in the village, but still. Tienne had assumed he was just messing with her, for some inexplicable reason.

But no. It was _really_ a pub. A rather nice pub, rustic and old-fashioned, all plain woods and furs, real casks stacked up behind the bar, that pleasant combination of hardness and softness these sorts of places could get — though, Tienne thought the stuffed heads hung on the walls here and there were horrid, no accounting for taste. But it was still a pub.

Tienne just shook her head to herself, dumbfounded. British mages sometimes, honestly...

The floo flared behind her, green-tinted shadows thrown out, Tienne stepped to the side in time for a family of five to stumble through the grate. Right, she had things to do today. First on the list was getting herself a room here.

Which turned out to be impossible. She managed to get through the conversation with Rosmerta, the woman apparently running the place, without too much difficulty — she had studied it in elementary, what felt like forever ago now, but she'd actually picked up most of her English through American films and British television, which, yes, somewhat embarrassing. (Once at a club in Paris she'd been informed by an American man, breathless from laughter, that most people from his country didn't _really_ say "fuck" that much.) So it wasn't a difficulty of making herself understood, Rosmerta apparently just didn't have any available rooms, fully booked by people (mostly foreigners) coming in for the First Task tomorrow. There were sizeable magical enclaves in Inverness and Edinburgh, but they'd likely be full up too, her best bet would be going all the way to Charing in London. Or just find a muggle hotel in Inverness, if she was comfortable with that.

Tienne rolled her eyes at that last bit — of course she'd be comfortable in a muggle hotel, but she _kind of doubted_ they accepted French or elvish currency (the standard in magical Britain), so that wouldn't exactly work very well, would it? Her best bet would probably be to floo to London, find a bank or something that would be willing to exchange francs or sickles for pounds...but not actually _stay_ there, because hotels in London were probably stupidly expensive. Pop back up to Inverness, maybe, she'd figure it out.

Sighing off her irritation and Rosmerta's apologies, Tienne stepped out onto the village street. And immediately hugged her coat tighter around herself — holy _fuck_, it's cold. It was only November, it should _not_ be this cold. Squinting against the wind whipping at her hair, Tienne looked around the little village — smaller than she'd expected, and seemingly frozen in time centuries ago, the buildings mostly peak-roofed wooden cottages — finally spotted the asymmetrical mess of Hogwarts rising in the distance. Right, that way. Ducking her head against the wind, she turned down the dirt street that seemed to be going in that general direction, and started off.

Eventually, just beyond the edge of the little village, was what was obviously a train platform of some kind, though completely empty at the moment. Just beyond that was the end loop of a dirt track, a few old-fashioned carriages sitting out there. But, _just_ the carriages, no horses or whatever to pull them. So how the hell were they supposed to get to the castle? It had to be a few kilometres away, did she have to walk there? That just seemed horribly inconvenient...

But even as she watched, a few people in an eclectic mix of archaic British robes and ordinary muggle clothes hopped into one of the carriages, shut the door, and the thing just...started off, by itself. Hmm. Must be enchanted or something. Alright, then.

Tienne was still a few metres away from the closest when a familiar voice called, "Moreau? What are you doing here?"

She looked that way and, sure enough, there was Doriane Delacour, standing out in the middle of the _horrid_ British autumn, the wind making even more of a mess of her perpetually messy hair than usual. Tienne had met Doriane a few times, but they didn't exactly know each other very well. Her mother was one of the instructors in the healing programme at Beauxbatons, Doriane was around now and again, assisted sometimes.

Honestly, Tienne thought she _knew of_ Doriane better than she knew her — she was the very first human–veela hybrid in the history of ever, she'd come up in blood magic textbooks and newspapers or magazines from time to time. And that wasn't really a basis for any kind of familiarity, was it.

"Miss Delacour, hello. Ah..." She didn't want to talk about why she was here, really. "I didn't expect to see you here."

Doriane raised an eyebrow at her, the one with the bar through it. "My mother is from Britain, you know, she decided to take the opportunity of her nephew ending up in the Tournament to introduce herself." Not Master Delacour, obviously, she was talking about Lise Delacour — Tienne had attended a talk she'd given once, but she'd never actually met Doriane's more famous parent. "Laïa and Izzie are staying up at the castle with our people, Maëlie wanted to visit them."

For a second, Tienne had no idea who she was talking about, before she belatedly spotted the little girl with her. She was maybe seven or eight, and half-hiding behind Doriane, peering out around her hip up at Tienne. Somehow, her hair was even worse than Doriane's, a huge puffy tangled monstrosity. "Oh, hello there, I didn't see you. Your sister?" she asked Doriane.

"Yep. I'd introduce you, but she's very shy." Yes, she _had_ noticed that. "Anyway, what brings you here? The First Task isn't until tomorrow, you know."

Right, back to the thing she didn't want to talk about. Oh well, it wasn't that big of a deal. "Ah, dropping in on my niece, actually."

Doriane frowned. "I thought you were muggleborn."

"I am, sort of — my mother's a squib, you know, but she didn't tell any of us until I started getting magic outbursts as a toddler. My mum had me really late, my eldest brother had already moved away to Britain before I was born, so, Statute of Secrecy, we weren't allowed to tell him, or his wife and little Maïa."

Doriane was frowning a little, clearly thinking about something. "Wait, why not? If he's your brother, he'd be immediate family."

"Apparently, for the purposes of the Statute, 'immediate family' is defined as people _in the household_, which he wasn't anymore." The only reason Anne, Tienne's twenty-year-older sister (who was really more like an aunt, for all intents and purposes), had been allowed to know about magic was because she'd dropped out of school to come back and help out when Mum had been pregnant with Tienne, she'd been around for those first few years. Mum had had to deal with her husband dying (Tienne had been born _after_ her father had died, actually), going through a difficult birth (they'd _both_ nearly died), raising a four-year-old girl being a toddler _and_ a rebellious pre-teen boy being a little shit (Rémy hadn't handled their father's unexpected death so well himself), all within the space of a few months, so she'd _really_ needed the help. In fact, Anne was still annoyed with Daniel for staying in Britain during that time, though Mum herself had never really held it against him.

(It probably helped that the four-year-old girl being a toddler had been Anne's problem in the first place — Mailys, the eldest of Tienne's nieces and nephews, the only one older than Tienne herself. Anne had gotten knocked up during _lycée_ and left the kid with her mother and stepfather so she could finish her education, so when it came to making things more difficult for Mum than they had to be, Anne was a slut in a glass house.)

But anyway, she was talking to one of her professor's kids here. "Mum _wanted_ to tell him, but she'd had multiple little kids to take care of at the time, she didn't want to risk getting in trouble. Actually," Tienne winced guiltily, "Adjustment came in and messed with their memories multiple times, when magic happened while they were visiting for the holidays. _That's_ going to be fun to explain..."

With a disdainful-yet-sympathetic grimace, Doriane drawled, "If it makes you feel better, in this country they wipe the memories of muggleborns and their families until they're old enough to go to school. I'm certain your niece's family have been obliviated any number of times."

...That was the stupidest fucking thing she'd ever heard. "No, that does _not_ make me feel better. What the _fuck_, Britain?"

"Yeah, I know." That thoughtful frown still on her face, Doriane's head tilted, hesitating for a second or two. "You said your niece's name is Maïa. You don't mean Hermione Granger."

Tienne was faintly jealous Doriane had nailed the English pronunciation of Maïa's first name — she'd known the girl for literally her entire life, and she'd never gotten it quite right. (Thankfully, Daniel hadn't left France so far behind he hadn't raised his daughter bilingual, because that would just be _embarrassing_.) "Oh, yeah, in fact, that's our Maïa. You've met her?"

"Briefly, she's one of Harry's best friends. I don't envy you that conversation — Hermione can be a bit..." Doriane trailed off, clearly not certain how to end that sentence tactfully.

Tienne smirked. "Yeah, that's our Maïa. At least I have an excuse to bail out if I have to — I've got to find _somewhere_ to spend the night, and there aren't any rooms available in Hogsmeade."

"Dorrie," the little girl (whose name Tienne had forgotten at some point) whined, drawing the word out long and plaintively, tugging on the hem of Doriane's jacket. "Can we go home now? I'm _cold_..."

Looking down at her, Doriane muttered, "I'm sorry, Princess, one more minute." At least, Tienne was pretty sure that's what they said, it wasn't French — one of the magical Aquitanian dialects, presumably, but Tienne's Occitan still wasn't very good. (All the classes at Beauxbatons were in French, or at least the ones _she'd_ taken, she'd never really needed to learn.) Turning back to Tienne, she offered, "I can ask our host to put you up too, if you like."

"Well, I wouldn't want to impose..." More like, she wouldn't want to spend a night or two in the home of a complete stranger. Especially since Doriane was probably talking about someone from one of the old noble families, if they had the space to host the Delacours and still have a room leftover for Tienne.

"I'm sure he wouldn't mind. We're staying with the Blacks, your niece's girlfriend's family — and they've claimed the Grangers as vassals, which means, by the traditional British sense of kinship the Blacks still keep to, you also count as family."

"Oh." She had been aware Maïa was dating Lyra Black, one of only two remaining members of the Noble and Most Ancient House of. (Even as young as she'd been expelled from her family and the magical world at large, Mum had still heard of the Blacks, it'd come up during the scandal over Sirius's escape and then exoneration.) Of course she'd known that, the thing that had finally clued Tienne in to Maïa being magical had been a profile of the Champions in the paper, Maïa had only been mentioned at all because of her relationship with Lyra.

Though, the article had spent rather more time on Maïa than might have been expected. They'd mentioned that Emma was apparently speaking for the Blacks in their ridiculous unelected parliament, with some speculation that her controversial entry represented a nascent _néocommunaliste_ faction in the body, and also that the enormous scandal that had gotten Dumbledore removed from his position in the CIS and in the local British government had been partially sparked by an open letter written by Maïa herself. Tienne _had_ followed the scandal around Dumbledore, of course, in which his legilimising students at Hogwarts had played a minor part, though French and Aquitanian newspapers hadn't published any of the children's names. They had these weird ideas about child protection, see, they preferred not to put minors' names in print if they could help it, especially connected to something so controversial — British newspapers, apparently, hadn't the same compunction.

The Grangers' part in Lyra's profile had raised quite a few things to talk about. For one, Maïa was apparently dating girls now? Not that Tienne had a problem with that or anything, she was just saying, she hadn't seen that coming at all. Mum _did_ sort of have a problem with it, but Tienne suspected that had more to do with Lyra's family than her being a girl. Mum did _not_ like the old aristocratic families in the magical world, even the fact of their existence — she hadn't found out until Tienne started taking history classes at Beauxbatons, fifty years later, that her birth family had been practically exterminated in the _communaliste_ revolution in France, and she'd honestly seemed more satisfied by the idea than anything (they _had_ exiled her and stuck her in a non-magical orphanage when she'd been a tiny kid, but still, what the fuck, Mum) — so she hadn't reacted particularly well to the news that her son and granddaughter had _apparently_ submitted themselves to one of the oldest, wealthiest families in Britain.

But then Mum had read up a little more on what Emma was doing in their parliament, a few statements that Sirius had made, and some of the shenanigans pulled off by Lyra herself that had made it into the papers (like that World Cup fiasco, for example), and grudgingly admitted that maybe these ones were okay. She still wasn't happy about it, but it could be worse.

Tienne was less than certain about that...but at the same time, she did have to admit that Maïa actually took after Mum quite a bit, when it came to her views on society and how it should function. (Though, by what she could tell, Mum was _far_ more willing to accept violent revolution as justifiable, but still.) And Emma did kind of remind Tienne of her mother sort of a lot sometimes — she was told her other siblings had teased Daniel for that relentlessly around the time of the wedding. (Tienne herself literally hadn't been born yet at the time, but she had no doubt she would have gotten in on it too.) Daniel was a big damn softie, but if Emma (and Maïa) had thought this whole vassalage thing with the Blacks was a good idea, it was probably fine.

But, she realised, she was being handed an opportunity to meet her brother's family's _lord_ for herself, in a relatively low-pressure, conflict-free setting, where she could make her own judgements about him. At the very least, she'd be able to bring her impression back to Mum, so they'd have more to go on wondering if this was really something they needed to worry about.

So she told Doriane that would be great, please do ask him if she could stay. They quickly arranged to meet back at the Three Broomsticks later with his answer, and went on their respective ways.

The carriage ride up to the castle was very smooth, and surprisingly brief — it moved at a _very_ good clip, but also without the occasional jerks and starts she'd normally expect from such a thing. But then, she'd only expect that if it were actually being pulled by a living animal, which this wasn't...or maybe it was? Sitting closer to it now, she definitely felt _something_ there. (A consequences of the sensing exercises they were taught in the healing programme, she could sort of feel living things now, which was rather neat while also slightly creepy sometimes.) But she couldn't at all guess what it was. It wasn't sapient, certainly, and she supposed there might be magical animals that could pull a carriage this consistently...but how many of those were _invisible_?

Weird, but the magical world was weird sometimes, Tienne decided to not overthink it.

Before too long, the carriage jerked to a sudden halt, and Tienne plopped back down to the dirt. Hogwarts towered up above her, a staggering mass of stone and metal, halls set at weird angles and towers placed seemingly at random...and _much_ larger than she'd expected it to be. The various magical nations could be very private sometimes, but basic information about all the major magical schools was made available to foreigners — with how small the student population was these days, Tienne couldn't possibly imagine they needed all of this space. Or even _most_ of it, really. That just seemed...impractical.

And also made it almost bloody impossible she'd be able to find Maïa on her own. It was a weekday, but the first task of the Tournament was tomorrow, she somehow doubted classes were proceeding as scheduled. (Teenagers could be quite unruly at the best of times, expecting them to behave themselves today was probably unrealistic.) She'd expected it would be relatively easy to track her down, given how small the student population was there could only be so many places she would be expected to be, but with how bloody _huge_ the castle was... Even if she found someone who knew _who_ she was — and, given how small the student population was, she was pretty much guaranteed to — chances were whoever she found would have no bloody clue _where_ Maïa was.

Well. This was why tracking spells existed, wasn't it?

Tienne stepped through the _huge_ double doors, a tingle of magic on the air as she crossed through some kind of environmental ward — it was much warmer inside, if slightly chillier than she might prefer. The room she stepped into was bloody _huge_, a wide hall with an arched ceiling stretching high above her head, glimmering with polished granite and gold, the few people walking around tiny and dull by comparison. Shaking her head to herself, she stepped to the side a little, pulled out her wand, and cast a basic locator charm.

Nothing happened. She blinked to herself, then shrugged — the wards probably interfered with that sort of charm, basic security feature. (Especially in a school for the nobility, she supposed that rivals might try to kidnap children now and again to use as leverage had probably been a very real concern in the past.) So she tried a few more advanced charms, each fizzling out, even _divination_-based tracking spells weren't working. Which, _holy shit_, paranoid much?

Hmm... She could probably cast a messenger charm, and follow _that_ to Maïa...or she could just cheat. The wards might interfere with basic charms and divinations, but she _seriously doubted_ they could stop blood tracking. Maïa should be the only person in the building she was closely related to, it shouldn't be difficult to identify her.

Taking a few more steps away from the main corridor of foot traffic — not that anyone had gone in or out of the main door since she'd arrived, still — Tienne cast a few basic attention-diverting palings, then an illusion, twisting light into an ephemeral mirror floating in front of her. Tienne sliced into her wrist, wincing only slightly (she couldn't cast a numbing charm first, they tended to interfere with these sort of magics), carefully painted a few glyphs on her forehead, her cheeks — like searching for like, representing that familiarity in a form she could see, sketch a path she could follow.

Tienne closed her eyes, threw magic into the glyphs cast in her own blood, the spell snapping into action. For a second she just felt faintly dizzy, but soon, a flush passing over her skin and her heart thumping in her ears, points of warmth and light started to rise out of the darkness, subtly throbbing with their own internal rhythm, all out of sync of each other and her own. Somewhat to her surprise, there were actually a few dozen of them — though she probably shouldn't be surprised, her mother had been born into one of the old families, presumably she had distant relatives in the British magical nobility. And they were distant, mostly, one signal was _far_ clearer than the others, the light brighter and its draw more insistent, enough it almost completely overwhelmed a few rather weaker signals nearby. Focusing on this one, on her desire to find it, Tienne sketched one last glyph on the back of her hand — the others abruptly vanished, a tether fading into existence connecting Tienne and Maïa, transient but present enough to follow.

She opened her eyes again, healed her wrist and cleaned the blood off her face, dismissed her illusion...and frowned. Where was the trail? The spell _was_ working — she blindly grasped at her surroundings with her mind, and yes, she could _definitely_ feel it there, the wards hadn't foiled it — there should be a trail of faint red-purple light only she could see leading right to Maïa, wherever she was. Tienne knew what it looked like, she'd used this same spell to track down Aimée once, when she'd managed to get herself separated from the family in Barcelona two summers ago — unlike many other tracking spells, it was subtle enough she could use it in the middle of the city with no one the wiser. (It was subtle to _maintain_, she meant, she'd slipped out of sight to cast it, obviously.) She'd expected there to be a trail leading her across the room, but she didn't see—

Oh, because it was behind her, leading through the main doors out onto the grounds. Because of course Maïa couldn't be _inside_, where it was warm. Obviously. Grumbling to herself, Tienne cast a warming charm before stepping back outside again.

Her tracking charm led her to the left, toward a row of greenhouses, and then around them and back toward the forest. No, not _toward_ the forest, _into_ the forest, the ephemeral little wisps of light slipping between a couple trees and twisting into shadows. Tienne frowned, hesitated for a moment halfway across the clearing. For a moment, she wondered if Maïa wasn't in the valley at all, had left to go somewhere else, but that couldn't be — this spell should only have a range of a few miles. Theoretically, if Maïa had been in range and then left after she'd cast it, it would still be showing Tienne the way to her, but it worked by divination (mediated through their shared blood, insulating it from the effects of the castle's anti-scrying wards), revealing the most efficient path to reach her destination. _Theoretically_, if Maïa had left for somewhere any significant distance away, it _should_ be leading her to the nearest floo grate or something. (Which would be a dead-end, since the spell couldn't tell her where she should take the floo to.) So Maïa couldn't be too far away, she must be in the forest somewhere.

Which was bloody _weird_. Tienne had met _less_ outdoorsy people than Maïa, but not very many — they'd taken a vacation to Greece, once, would have been five years or so ago now, and literally every time Tienne and the others had gone out to the beach Maïa had stayed in the room with a book by herself. (And she'd been tiny then, Maïa was _such_ a nerd.) That Maïa was out in the forest was the only reasonable explanation, but that was such an out-of-character thing for her to be doing, there _must_ be some reason she was out here. She wasn't exactly the type to go take walks out in the trees for fun.

Because divination was neat sometimes, her little road of light did lead her on the most efficient path, avoiding the thickest brush, taking detours around bunches of trees or bits of mossy stone for no obvious reason, but Tienne assumed there must be one. Of course, that it was the most _efficient_ path didn't stop Tienne from occasionally tripping on a root, or getting her coat caught on a branch now and then. She was certain she was making quite a bit of noise, Maïa would probably hear her coming long before she spotted her.

Or, somebody _else_ would find her first. Among the tapestry of life around her, warm but relatively featureless, there was something hotter, brighter, more active — something intelligent, following her. Tienne hadn't noticed it at first, too focused on the path leading toward Maïa and not falling on her face like a clumsy idiot, but as it got closer she finally picked it out, suddenly hitched to a stop. She didn't know _what_ might be in this forest — she'd heard there were centaurs, and apparently there were _bloody acromantulae_ in here somewhere (presumably nowhere near the school, or someone would have noticed before) — but chances were it wasn't anything _too_ threatening. Despite what a lot of people claimed, wild magical beings, elves or dryads or whatever, tended to be relatively harmless.

Looking around, it took Tienne a moment to spot it — far enough away the mostly leafless brush _almost_ concealed it, but not quite. A figure maybe about waist-high, hints of fur white and gold. A wolf? Probably an animagus. Speaking in her most careful English, she said, "Hello, over there. I'm looking for Maïa Granger. Is she out here?"

The wolf had frozen when Tienne had halted, presumably in an effort to be less noticeable, but it twitched as she spoke directly to it, tensing somewhat. After a short moment of hesitation, it moved, bounding around the brush separating them, trotting along the path Tienne had taken to approach closer — yep, that was _definitely_ a wolf. She'd never seen one in person before, she hadn't realised how _large_ the things were. (She stopped herself from reaching for her wand, it wasn't snarling at her or doing anything particularly threatening, she was fine. Probably.) Once the wolf had come within a few metres, a more appropriate conversational distance, there was a flare of magic, its form shifting, and—

Her eyes going wide, Tienne choked out an awkward _guh_ of surprise. The woman standing before her was a little taller than Tienne, probably right around her age (or perhaps a _little_ younger), blonde hair wild and wind-swept, she was lean and _very_ fit, subtle lines from muscle visible here and there, mud streaked in bands up to her knees. She was also _completely naked_.

...She must be wilderfolk, then. Animagi generally took everything on them with them when they changed — though they didn't actually _need_ to, it usually took an extra effort of concentration to leave something behind — but the same wasn't true of wilderfolk, they always left _everything_ behind. Sort of like how veela and lilin would, if whatever it was wasn't specifically enchanted to come with them, except there supposedly wasn't an equivalent enchantment for wilderfolk — probably because few wilderfolk bothered with clothing at all ever, so nobody had put in the effort to figure one out. So, unless this woman was an animagus who'd decided to leave human society behind entirely, she must be wilderfolk.

Which, she wasn't saying that was a _bad_ thing, she didn't _care_. Tienne had just literally never met one before. (At least, not as far as she knew.) At least she was managing to not stare like a jackass, she guessed...after the first couple seconds, anyway — she couldn't help it, okay, a naked person had just appeared out of nowhere...

"Why do you look for Maïa?" The wilderfolk girl's speech sounded slightly stilted, her English nearly as bad as Tienne's, but it was understandable enough.

"Eh, I'm her aunt. I'm here for the Tournament, tomorrow, I was coming to say hello."

The girl tilted her head, her hair shifting over her shoulders with the motion, eyes narrowing a little in obvious suspicion. But, after a couple seconds of unnervingly-intense staring, she said, "Come, follow." And then she was a wolf again, slipping past Tienne and setting off in the direction of her spell-lit path — the red-purple glow shifted as the wolf went, as though pulled over and pinned to the ground by her paws, implying following the wilderfolk was now the most efficient way to get to Maïa.

...Okay, then. Tienne washed the blood off her hand with a quick charm, killing her tracking spell, the illusion instantly vanished. And she followed.

After only a few more difficult minutes — she got the feeling the wolf-girl was irritated with how slow and clumsy she was, kept pausing ahead to wait for her to catch up, silently watching her — Tienne finally stepped into a clearing, a patch where the stone of the mountains came up too close to the surface for trees to take root. Despite having heard them before she got close enough to see them, Tienne was rather surprised just how many people there were here. Most of them were scattered around practising defence spells — mostly various stunning charms, a few shields — but someone had conjured a couple chairs and a desk, a few people leaning over some papers there, clearly discussing some project.

Maïa, Tienne noticed, was in this latter group. Wearing a thick jumper against the cold, her impossible hair loosely held back with a scrunchie, she looked pretty much the same as always — save for the fact that she was in the middle of an argument with three older kids in obviously magical dress, the two boys (identical twins, obviously) only with cloaks but the girl with full-on boots and tunic and cloak and everything.

It was slightly surreal, honestly. Tienne had _known_ Maïa was magical, yes, but it was still just...weird, seeing her on the grounds of a magical school, surrounded by people in magical-made clothes, spells shooting back and forth not far away. She froze at the edge of the clearing for a moment before finally shaking the odd moment off.

The wolf-girl had run off toward the kids practising spells, Tienne left her to it, headed straight for Maïa. She was a couple metres away when one of the boys noticed her. "Heads up, girls," "we've got company." Oh hell, bonded twins, she never got used to that...

Maïa didn't look up, scribbling something on one of the pages, her brow furrowed in concentration, but the other girl did. She was definitely a Proficiency student, a couple years older than Maïa, black-haired with narrow, dramatic features — currently turned on Tienne with an impressively sharp glare. "You're not supposed to be here. Who are you?"

"Well, _that's_ rude — I just wanted to see my favourite niece, is that a crime now?"

Maïa froze, writing hitched in the middle of a glyph (Northern runes, Tienne couldn't read it), so still she hardly seemed to be breathing.

"Do mine ears deceive me, Gred, or is that a French accent?"

"No, Forge, I think you're right."

"I would say we got us a Beauxbatons spy on her hands, but..."

"...you'd think a spy would come up with a better lie than that."

"Ah, but maybe that's the trick! Clearly she couldn't possibly be a spy because she's so _bad_ at spying! It's brilliant!"

"Yes, yes, I think you have something there, Gred." Wait, Tienne had thought _this_ one was Gred...not that 'Gred' was even a real name... "Cleary we've underestimated our competitors."

"We must step up our game!"

"Yeah, nobody out—"

"Shut up." That was Maïa, said hard and flat. The twins cut off immediately, all three of the older kids blinking down at Maïa — apparently they thought that cold bluntness was just as out of character as Tienne did. Maïa stared down at their work for another couple seconds before finally glancing up. "_Tienne_?"

She tried to smile, but it felt like it came out a bit more shaky and uncertain than she wanted. "Hey, Maïa."

"What are you—" Maïa cut herself off, rubbing at her face with both hands. "No, you know what, I don't have time for this right now. Mallory, how does this look?" she asked, turning one of the papers around toward the other girl.

"Er..." The older girl, Mallory, glanced between the two of them, her discomfort almost tangible. "I thought you were muggleborn."

Maïa glared at her. "_So did I._"

"You are, technically," Tienne said, with an awkward shrug. "We both are. See, my mother's a squib, and—"

"_What?!_ How could— _No_, I have too much to do, I'm not getting distracted by this right now. Mallory?"

With a somewhat concerned frown — probably at the desperate pleading on Maïa's voice saying her name, that was a bit...much — the girl reluctantly turned down to the page. "Ah... This looks good, yeah. Are you certain you can handle the strain? I haven't practised this sort of thing at all myself, and we don't really have time for me to learn. Even with the blood magic, you'll still have to..."

"I think so. I'll scale the outputs down testing it, just in case." Maïa poured over their papers again for a moment, eyes flicking around seemingly at random, lips twitching. "Right, come on," she said, abruptly pushing herself to her feet. "Let's try it out." She stomped off toward the middle of the clearing and the rest of the kids practising their spells, Mallory and the twins starting after her, shooting Tienne uncertain glances.

"I'll just wait here then, shall I."

Maïa hitched to a stop, one hand coming up to rub at her forehead. Not turning to face her, but still switching to French for her benefit, she said, "I'm sorry, Tienne, I just— I don't have the energy to deal with this right now. With the game coming up _tomorrow_, we have to get this right, I can't get distracted by Dad's side of the family _apparently_ being magic, and _nobody fucking telling me_..."

Tienne blinked — she didn't think she'd ever heard Maïa swear before. In English, maybe, but not in French, at least. "Mum wanted to tell you all when I started showing magic, but, the Statute..."

"Dad's your brother, though."

"It's not _immediate family_ that are exceptions to the Statute, it's _people in the household_. I wasn't even alive yet when Daniel moved to England, so."

Her head bowing a bit, her shoulders squaring, Maïa growled something that was probably a curse, Tienne didn't catch it.

"I _am_ sorry, I just, but with— Well, we had no idea you were magical until we saw you with your girlfriend in the paper a couple days ago, and—"

"Oh, of course!" Maïa yelled, in English again. "_Of course_ I was outed to my family in a bloody _newspaper article!_ I should have known something like that would happen eventually, because the magical press is the _fucking_ magical press..."

Tienne winced — that did sound kind of bad when she thought about it that way, didn't it? "You know none of us care if you're gay or whatever." She nearly said something about how making a fuss about that would be a bit hypocritical of her, but the only women she'd ever been legitimately attracted to had been lilin (and veela, and this one river nymph), and she was pretty sure that didn't count...or maybe Trixie did, actually, river nymphs didn't have anything like the empathic sex magic thing lilin and veela did, but she still wasn't a _human_ woman, so...

Maïa let out a long, tense sigh, and then, finally, turned around to actually look at Tienne. She was obviously _very_ annoyed, her face pulled into a strained glare, but. "I know, Tienne. I'm not angry with... Well, no, I _am_ angry with you, and Grandmother, obviously, but I'll get over it. But _right now_, I have work to do. I'll talk to you later, okay?"

"Sure. I'll be here," she said, flopping into one of the now-empty chairs.

"Right." Shooting her a last uncomfortable look — probably at the realisation that Tienne would be watching them at it, stage fright like — Maïa turned back around and continued on toward the rest of their group, shaking her head to herself.

After a bit of chatter and disorganised scrambling, the whole group had reformed, packed together with Maïa and Mallory at the middle. Someone cast a noise charm, which was apparently their signal to start, because the people around the edges started casting a panoply of charms — palings mostly, also trap hexes seemingly at random across the ground some metres away, but one of the twins (the other was standing at a fair distance, just watching) and Mallory were doing a bit of transfiguration, narrow fingers of dirt rising out of the ground, creating a dense forest of the things starting about twelve metres out from the centre, the dirt then transfigured into bronze, then flaring, the surface going wavy and spiky, frost limming along the surface...

While all this happened, Maïa stood still in the centre, her eyes closed, unmoving. After some seconds, she raised a hand, a single finger, and...started drawing glyphs in the air, lines faintly glowing green and blue left floating in her finger's wake.

Tienne stared, dumbfounded. That was... Was that _free graphic spell-shaping?_ But... But Maïa was _barely_ fifteen! Where the hell had she even _learned_ that?

With some effort, Tienne managed to stop herself from jumping up and stunning her. The graphic arts could be _very_ dangerous when not performed on a static medium — like, _accidentally incinerate several city blocks_ dangerous. But Maïa certainly knew that. She just had to trust that, if Maïa was even attempting it, she must know what she was doing.

Besides, it was probably already too late to do anything about it.

Maïa drew out a small handful of glyphs — Tienne couldn't read it from here, too many people and pillars of transfigured bronze in the way — the spell taking with a sharp pulse of magic. Her chair shivered under her, the _ground_ was shaking — not a lot, it was barely noticeable, just a little vibration that quickly faded away. Whatever Maïa had done must involve fucking about with geomancy somehow. (As though fucking about with _free graphic spell-shaping_ hadn't been bad enough to begin with, God...) In a ring around the group of kids, the ground between them and the little transfigured pillars started shifting around, moving slowly enough Tienne couldn't tell what was happening quite yet.

In the middle of the circle, one hand pressed against the floating glyphs of her first spell, Maïa drew another couple glyphs, the motion a little more shaky this time, then drew a line between these and her first spell. There was another little shiver running through the ground, though less noticeable this time, and cutting off much quicker. Whatever she'd done, there was no obvious external effect, but it'd clearly taken more out of Maïa — her head was a bit lower, partially bent over. For a moment she just breathed, rather heavily, her hands on her knees. Mallory — who'd conjured a knife at some point, cutting at her own palm — stepped closer, looked slightly concerned, but Maïa waved her off, straightened again.

Maïa cast a few more series of glyphs, these blinking out as soon as she was done drawing them — more palings, she spoke to the others after each one, presumably telling them they didn't need to hold up the charm versions anymore. While she did that with one hand, Mallory cut at the palm of her other hand, presumably carving a few glyphs into her skin. She'd heard Mallory saying something about blood magic, but what the _hell_ were they doing?

This was some pretty serious magic they were throwing around, it was a bit overwhelming, though Tienne really _shouldn't_ be surprised. Maïa always _had_ been advanced for her age, when it came to academic things — she should have expected the most bookish of her nieces would be just as proficient with magic as she was with everything else.

(Though, seriously, where had Maïa learned this stuff? With how tightly Britain regulated the Dark Arts, Tienne wouldn't have thought Maïa would have even _heard_ of this sort of graphic magic...)

Maïa's first spell, the one messing with the ground, was finally starting to take shape now: a ring of earth was rising around them, a depression sinking down just beyond it. Making themselves a little hill fort, apparently. As the outline of the depression started to become clear, the others started casting spells there too — a layer of ice appeared, then a layer of a liquid of some kind, then various conjured detritus (marbles particularly, bouncing all over the place), and then _more_ trap hexes...

Once Mallory's carving was done, they conferred very briefly with the others, and then...held hands, bloody palm to bloody palm. Some kind of quick-and-dirty power-sharing thing, maybe? Then Maïa was drawing glyphs again, quickly and methodically. And then more glyphs, and then more, and then _more_...

Holy shit, what the _fuck_ was she _doing_...

"Maïa is getting pretty good at this." At some point, a girl had dropped into one of the other chairs around the little table, Tienne hadn't noticed. She was _tiny_, with dramatic, not-quite-_too_-pretty features, making her age pretty much impossible to guess (her first guess was maybe twelve, but she had the feeling that was too young), her hair _very_ black, thick and curly, wearing rather expensive-looking dueling clothes in black and red — taken all together, Tienne was all but certain this girl was from a wealthy, old pureblood family. "Not as good as me, of course, but she's catching up pretty damn fast. Maïa's dead clever like that, you know."

"Yeah, I know." According to Daniel, Maïa had started reading when she'd still been _three_ — when she thought about it, it wasn't really a surprise that she might take to the graphic arts like a fish to water. Didn't mean it wasn't _stupid_ reckless, but...

"So. You told Sylvie you're Maïa's aunt."

Tienne turned back to the girl — not that there was anything to watch anymore, the wall of rising earth had gotten high enough she couldn't see Maïa at all anymore. "Sylvie?"

"The wolf."

"Oh. Ah, yes, I am. Daniel, her father, he's my eldest brother."

The girl gave her an odd, crooked look. "Dan's got to be like thirty years older than you." She'd abruptly switched to French, probably realising Tienne's English wasn't particularly great.

"Twenty-four, actually."

"That's quite an age difference between siblings, for muggles."

"Yeah, well, my family's weird." That was kind of an understatement, really. "Not really your business, is it?"

The girl smirked. "I guess not. Lyra Black."

Oh. Maïa's girlfriend. Tienne probably should have been able to guess that. "Sébastienne Moreau."

One of Lyra's eyebrow's ticked up. "Tienne? Maïa's mentioned you. I assume those wards over her muggle grandmother's house are your work."

"When have you been to my mother's house?"

"Back in July — I came by quick to drop off the House Law for Emma, went out with Maïa as long as I was in town."

...That must have been when the rest of them had been visiting Tienne's aunts and cousins, she couldn't think of any other time Emma and Maïa would have been alone long enough for Lyra to not be noticed. Damn good timing, that. "Yes, I set the wards there. Nothing much, my options were limited by—" Tienne cut off as a sharp, tingling crackle of magic shot through the air around her.

It was coming from the direction of their little hill fort — Maïa must finally be done with this big spell of hers. There weren't any visible effects, not at first, just the static of too much magic on the air. Though, gradually, something started fading into existence. It was a dome, formed of blue-yellow light, so faint it was almost entirely invisible, dozens and dozens of geometric faces arranged to create a single, smooth surface. It gradually darkened as Tienne watched, starting to look almost _solid_. The twin outside the dome shot a stunning charm at the dome, the spell splashing apart against the surface; someone on the inside fired back, he barely danced out of the way of a bludgeoning hex, loudly cursing.

That... How did...

"Are those _mobile wards_? Like Grindelwald's?"

"Yep!" Lyra chirped, grinning with childlike enthusiasm. "Maïa and Mallory's design isn't _nearly_ as complex as the ones distributed to the _communalistes_ militias, but it doesn't have to be — I doubt anyone Beauxbatons or Durmstrang is going to field can pull off a proper Hostile Takeover, they'll have to approach on foot. They even adapted the basic framework from an historical _communaliste_ design. Which, someone on the judge's panel is _definitely_ going to recognise that, it'll be _hilarious_."

...Okay, apparently the people speculating about the Blacks maybe being _néocommunalistes_ now _hadn't_ just been talking out of their asses. Weren't they one of the most important British noble families?

Huh. Looked like maybe things here in Britain were about to get...interesting.

(Of course, Mother was herself a _néocommunaliste_ sympathiser, so this wasn't a _bad_ thing exactly, just..._interesting_.)

"So, how did _this_ happen, anyway? The odds of two people so closely related both being muggleborn is astronomical, it can't be random. Was your father a squib?"

Oh, right. Talking to a little British noble girl...who happened to be a bioalchemic clone of Bellatrix Black, and was also dating her niece. Pay attention, Tienne. "Ah, my mother, actually."

"Right," Lyra said, nodding, "wasn't her name some fancy Greek-sounding thing? I'd thought that was weird at the time, but hey, maybe some muggles use some really old-fashioned names, I don't actually know."

"It's Athénaïs."

The girl snorted. "Yep, that's _definitely_ a pureblood name. Would I know her family?"

"Oh, I can guarantee you you do." Tienne glanced in the direction of the _ridiculously_ well-defended hill fort, but Maïa was obviously still busy. Eh, why not. It wasn't like she had any damn clue what else they could talk about. "My mum was born into House d'Angeus."

For a long moment, Lyra just stared at her. "Wait, are you serious? _The_ House d'Angeus?"

Tienne couldn't help a smirk. "Is there more than one?"

"Well, not since, like, the Fifteenth Century or something, but... You know, your mother is probably the only one left, House d'Angeus was completely wiped out by the _communalistes_."

"Yes, I know. Though, I didn't know until we learned about the Revolution in history class, Mum was kicked out early enough she had no idea."

"That must have been fun to read about."

"Mostly, she said good riddance to bad rubbish — she was slightly bitter about being sent off to an orphanage, you can imagine."

Lyra giggled. "Yeah, I guess. Who are you grandparents? I mean, what are their names, I might have heard of them. My mother — or grandmother, whatever, you know what I mean — she was a Rosier, her grandmother was a d'Angeus, I had to learn some of their names when I was little."

Oh, apparently the British nobility did that _memorise your whole damn family tree back seven generations_ thing too, Mum had mentioned having to start doing that when she'd been literally three years old. Smirking again, a dark note of amusement on her voice, Tienne drawled, "Nicodème and Mélisande."

Lyra's eyes widened, her mouth dropping open a little. "You're _joking_."

"Nope."

"No, really, you've got to be fucking with me, because I thought you just said Maïa's great-grandfather is _Nicodème d'Angeus_."

"I'm not fucking with you, Nicodème d'Angeus really was my grandfather. I took a lineage test to prove it and everything." When she'd started telling people what her mother had told _her_ about her parents, nobody had believed her at first — there hadn't been any record of Mum's birth at all, as had sometimes happened with squibs born to old noble families. It wasn't entirely unusual for a muggleborn to claim they were related to one famous mage or another, though Nicodème d'Angeus would be a _very_ strange choice.

Because, Tienne's grandfather was actually somewhat famous — or infamous, depending on who you asked. Nicodème had essentially been in charge of all of House d'Angeus — though, these things were actually very complicated, it wasn't quite so simple as him being able to just order them all around — and by the time of the Revolution had been influential in the Parliament of Paris for decades. As the Revolution started becoming a serious threat, Nicodème had been made Lieutenant-General of the _la Maréchaussée_, the highest-ranking law enforcement (and military) figure in all of magical France.

After the _communalistes_ successfully took over the country, abolishing the Parliaments and the Chancellery, Nicodème refused to surrender, continued prosecuting a vicious campaign against the provisional government and their supporters. The _loyalistes_ coalesced around him, the only serious organised resistance left by then. His capture, trial, and execution in 1943 was generally considered to be the final nail in the coffin of pre-Revolutionary France.

(When French mages referred to the Revolution, they didn't mean _the_ French Revolution, it was very confusing sometimes. Though, it _did_ make sense, when she thought about it — in a sense, _L'Ancien Régime_ had continued to exist on the magical side until the early 1940s, the Revolution back in the 18th Century had had very little effect on them.)

The worst violence of the Revolution actually came _after_ the _communalistes_ took control of the country — various _loyalistes_, Nicodème's group the largest and most "legitimate" by far, continued to strike at the _communalistes_, and sometimes people only tangentially related to them. If _loyalistes_ couldn't get their hands on any actual _communalistes_, they settled for killing their families, sympathisers, _their_ families...or just people they _thought might be_ sympathisers, it was nuts. The various factions in the Revolutionary government, of which the _communalistes_ were the largest but not the only, then retaliated with equally horrible tactics. There had already been tribunals ongoing against members of the old Parliaments and _la Maréchaussée_, owners of lands and manors and workshops and tenements, but in the wake of violence at the hands of _loyalistes_, the tribunals started issuing death sentences — not only against people who had provably done real harm, and might _arguably_ deserve to be punished, but sometimes against people whose only real crime had been being of noble birth, or supporting the old aristocracy then or _loyalistes_ now.

And it just deteriorated from there. The _communalistes_ would execute someone, and the _loyalistes_ would hit someone's home, and then sympathisers on the ground (dirt-poor purebloods, mostly) would raid the estate of some noble family or another and cart them off to face a tribunal, looting the place and often burning it to the bedrock — and, increasingly, killing all the residents who _weren't_ a name of any importance the tribunals would care about, including the children. And then the _loyalistes_ would do something insane, like show up in a market in the middle of the day and indiscriminately murder people. And then the sympathisers would retaliate, and then the _loyalistes_ would retaliate _back_, and so on and so on and so on.

To this day, there were some people who claimed the _communalistes_ were responsible for the worst of the violence — or, usually _actually_ the faceless masses of the underclasses of French society, most of whom hadn't been directly associated with the _communalistes_ — and other people who insisted the _loyalistes_ had instigated the cycle, and had often been the ones to escalate first. Basically, people who had sympathies for opposite sides of the civil war were _still_ arguing about who started it, fifty years later.

But, generally speaking, most people agreed Nicodème d'Angeus had been a complete monster. Which was especially remarkable, because unlike a number of others in his social class he hadn't stuck out as being particularly objectionable before the Revolution — though, proceedings of the Parliament of Paris had made it clear he'd had a _shocking_ degree of disdain for ordinary people, that had been the norm among the nobility at the time. But even in the early days of the Revolution, long before the _communalistes_ had taken power, he'd advocated for executing anyone involved, and even those too closely associated with them — he'd referred to _communalisme_ as a disease that would destroy civilisation if allowed to spread, to preserve their nation and their way of life everybody contaminated with it must be purged — and _after_...

Nicodème had kept a diary during his war against the Revolutionary government, detailing the people he dealt with and his planning of and participation in various actions and just his personal thoughts. Passages had been included in this or that book Tienne had read over the years, and it was _horrifying_. Not just the _things he'd done_, but how he'd decided they _should be done_... Nicodème wrote about the simple, uneducated rabble, how they were a base and violent people, that the reason people like him and his peers existed was because they _needed_ to be controlled, lest civilisation itself fall into ignorance and barbarity. The common man was a beast, that could and _should_ be brought to heel as one — he considered slaughtering random people to be _just as good_ as killing actual _communalistes_, because the _goal_ was to frighten the rabble into returning to their proper place, to once again accept the enlightened, necessary rule of they wise few.

After rioters killed his own family, well, there came a point where Tienne wasn't convinced Nicodème really even cared about the politics of it anymore. Toward the end, he was only interested in making those who had wronged him suffer — _those who had wronged him_ here being _the French people at large_. Nicodème had hardly been the _only_ monster to crop up over the course of the war, but he was certainly the single most prominent, and arguably one of those most extreme in his rhetoric. It was just disturbing to read, honestly.

It had been even _more_ disturbing knowing that this man, this psychotic war criminal she was reading about, was _her grandfather_. In any history class that touched on the Revolution, Tienne often ended up feeling _very_ uncomfortable.

So, _definitely_ not the kind of person a muggleborn should want to claim as an ancestor, was the point.

Lyra had gone silent, clearly thinking this revelation over, watching her team continue building up the defences of their hill fort. The ring wall had been transfigured, the top of the ridge pushed out so the incline actually _curved inward_, like a wave about to break. It was hard to tell from here, but it _looked_ like most of the wall, or at least the outside surface of it, had been transfigured into iron, bits at the top stretched out into crenellations, barriers the defenders now standing on the ridge could hide behind while still tossing spells out through the gaps. Which kind of seemed like overkill, since Maïa's _mobile wards_ prevented people from attacking at range anyway.

The whole thing taken together — the spires of bronze layered with trap hexes, the moat, the ring wall — was a _very_ impressive defensive fortification, especially since they'd put the whole thing together in ten minutes or so using only what they had on them and the dirt around them...and that they were _schoolchildren_. Honestly, Tienne wondered if even _gendarmes_ could get through that. If the wards held to assault, which they very well might, they'd have to approach on foot, which honestly looked pretty much impossible.

At least, it'd be pretty much impossible to take them _alive_ — they could always just blow the whole thing up, of course. Modern French magical security forces were known to bring in muggle explosives to take out wards and such if they felt the situation called for it. Just this summer, an assault against a trafficking ring had opened with a coordinated barrage of RPGs, it was a whole thing.

Finally, the girl said, "I _would_ say that's a hell of a coincidence, but I'd bet it's not. The gods do have a sense of humour — whatever they're going for here, _someone_ is amusing themselves."

...Okay, then?

"So," Lyra said, turning to smirk at her, "do you want to tell Maïa about her great-grandfather, or should I?"

Tienne felt her lips twitch. "I think the _so your great-grandfather was a war criminal_ conversation is the sort of thing you save until after you've gotten through the awkward stuff."

The girl seemed less than entirely pleased about that, but she shrugged, presumably deciding to leave it up to Tienne. (Old purebloods had a whole thing about internal family business, she'd probably keep her nose out of it.) "You know, I never really understood the idea of a _war crime_. The whole _point_ of war is to kill the other side, and I kind of thought normal people considered killing people to be sort of inherently criminal in the first place? Like, I just don't get how people decide when killing someone is okay and when it's not, it can be very confusing. And, I've been paying more attention to muggle stuff recently — Maïa talks about things sometimes, you know, I have to know enough about it to keep up at least — and it...kind of seems like it's applied really inconsistently? I don't get it."

"Oh, there are muggles who've pointed out the same thing, it's a mess." Though, granted, the thing most often focused on is the hypocrisy often shown in prosecutions for war crimes — people did generally agree on the targeting of noncombatants being unacceptable, Western nations just rarely got in trouble for it. (She meant, obviously, they were the ones in control of the international courts, they weren't going to try _too_ hard to prosecute their own people.) But she had the feeling she wouldn't get very far trying to explain that, the distinction between applying the law inconsistently and applying it hypocritically was only aesthetic anyway.

Of course, bloody _war crimes tribunals_ weren't really what she wanted to talk to Lyra Black about. How the hell had that happened?

Forcing a cheery smirk on her face, Tienne said, "So! I hear you're shagging my niece. Having fun with that, are you?"

Unfortunately, Lyra didn't show a hint of embarrassment, just smiling somewhat blankly back at her. "We're _not_ shagging, in point of fact. Maïa's all twitchy and shy about it, it's kind of adorable, honestly. I can't say I really get _why_, but, well, normal people." She shrugged.

...Tienne hoped Lyra realised calling Maïa a normal person was sort of hilarious. "And here I had all this teasing planned out. Damn."

"Sorry to disappoint. I can start trying to get in her pants for you if you like."

"You _probably_ shouldn't tell Maïa that you're seducing her so I can tease her about it," she said, barely choking back _completely_ inappropriate giggles.

"Well, obviously I wouldn't tell her until afterward. That would just be gauche."

"Oh, I can tell you're going to be fun already. Nice to meet you, Lyra."

The girl gave her a toothy grin.

* * *

[_néocommunaliste_] — _As a reminder, Grindelwald's movement called themselves _Gemeenschoppisten _(or the cognate _Gemeinschaftisten _in standard German), literally translated "communitarians" or "collectivists". The term was translated into French as _communalistes_. The ideology has seen a resurgence in various European countries since the 60s, post-Grindelwald adherents referred to as _neo-Gemeenschoppisten_, or _néocommunalistes _in French._

_Yeesh, sorry about that delay. Rather longer than we originally intended._

_We both got distracted with other projects for a little bit there — I legit wrote like 100k words for my Dragon Age fic in the span of two weeks, what the fuck — but we're starting to poke at this fic again. Next is the First Task, which involves two parts: the events before the start of the task, mostly involving the Order of Merlin induction, and the task itself. The first part will probably be a couple chapters, we'll start publishing once we finish the whole thing. The task will probably be a single monster chapter, and then a smaller aftermath chapter._

_I can make no promises on **when** we'll have those since, again, both distracted by other things. They'll happen when they happen._

_Oh, and, yeah, Hermione's grandmother is a squib from an old pureblood family. This was pulled from my headcanon, all stuff I already had set up. For people who read The Long Game, the wards over her grandmother's house and the names Tienne and Aimée should have been red flags. Because this fic is becoming a huge confused mash-up of both our headcanons, apparently?_

_—Lysandra_


	48. A Simple Matter

"You know, the more time I spend here, the more I feel I hate this place."

Walking next to him, her silly cloak rippling with each step, Síomha turned a raised eyebrow on Michael. "Oh?"

"It's just so..." Michael trailed off, gazing around the hallway they were currently in. This particular spot wasn't _so_ bad, so far as these things went — they were somewhat out of the way, not in the big fancy halls they normally received guests in, so it wasn't quite so over-the-top as a lot of places. The stone, like elsewhere in the castle, was a sort of greyish-white, bits of quartz or whatever sparkling where the light hit it. The light fixtures were finely-sculpted silver and crystal, glowing with what looked like from a very bright candle but was actually an enchantment on the crystal. There was a long rug down the centre of the hall, a deep blue fringed with bronze, which Michael recognised now as Ravenclaw colours (despite being nowhere near Ravenclaw Tower). There were tapestries hung along the walls here and there, sometimes colourful designs, sometimes a depiction of people or events he assumed would have some meaning to someone. And there were paintings, of course, the weird magical animated kind, trimmed with gold and silver.

Seeing these paintings of people, who could talk back to viewers _like_ people, had had Michael wondering...well, how _alive_ they are, exactly. Apparently, that was a very complicated question. Magical portraits were considered to be _images_ of consciousness, but not themselves truly conscious...sort of. Sarah Selwyn, the blonde woman from Miskatonic who made Saoirse people _very_ nervous but Michael thought was actually quite helpful and pleasant to talk to — and most everyone from Foreign Affairs agreed, the mages were just strange about Americans — insisted that consciousness itself was a form of magic, and if magic were contained in one place long enough in a great enough volume it would naturally develop some form of consciousness. Especially if it were contained within an enchantment designed to simulate consciousness, like a portrait. Whether portraits had enough magic in them to cross the line from _seeming_ into _being_, well, that was a difficult question, but Sarah leaned toward _no_.

So, while the people in the portraits along the walls, some chatting amongst themselves or reading books or whatever, some calling out to them, a couple even insulted Síomha (which was never not amusing), they sure _seemed_ like people, like little windows into a miniature world, but they weren't. It was just...a little creepy? Like, some kind of _Twilight Zone_ shite, it was unnerving.

But that wasn't the thing that bothered him, not really. It wasn't even about the castle itself — though Hogwarts was needlessly large, and far more rich than a _school for children_ could ever have need to be. No, it was the _existence_ of a place like this, more than the place itself.

Michael would admit to having had an overly-optimistic initial impression of the magical world. Once he'd gotten over how much of a _complete arse_ Fudge was, well, he'd maybe made some assumptions about magic and magical society that were very childish, looking back. He meant, magic was fucking _magic_, right, you could do _anything_, with just the wave of a little wooden stick — and, in a world where you could do _anything_ with just the wave of a little wooden stick, why should a class society ever need to exist? Proper application of magic should make scarcity, should make labour itself a thing of the past. And the few mages he'd met toward the beginning, all clearly comfortable and educated and sedentary, well, he'd been given little reason to assume otherwise.

Until mages started referring to _gold_, and _noble houses_. The only reason people should be using money was, well, if they had things to spend it on. Asking after why the hell people needed to be able to buy anything, it turned out magic was far more limited than he'd initially assumed — while one _can_ create all sorts of structures and products and the like using magic, it usually takes some specialised skill to do much of anything, in some cases the equivalent of postsecondary education. And, also, in most cases they couldn't simply conjure the necessary materials out of nothing, they had to acquire those naturally. Similar problem with food. One _could_ eat conjured food, according to Fionn, but it was very much inadvisable — conjuration was temporary, and if it lasted long enough for the body to integrate any of the conjured molecules into anything important, _yeah_, that was a capital-letters Bad Idea. Raw materials were still necessary, so markets had still developed to manage them, and labour was still necessary (if not in the classical manual sense), so the exploitation of that labour was still incentivised.

And, well, if _nobility_ existed, it stood to reason a wider class system did as well — after all, "nobility" has no meaning without a common populace to contrast itself against. But, even acknowledging that, he'd _maybe_ allowed himself too much optimism once again. After all, magic was the great equaliser, was it not? Clíodhna had explicitly suggested that was a large part of the reason communities with a significant proportion of mages had always been remarkably egalitarian between the sexes — most cultures had gendered roles and expectations for people, sure, but the notion that women are somehow inherently inferior to men, so common across much of the world, had never really taken hold among mages. Even in more misogynistic societies before the Statute, _magical_ women were often considered an exception somehow.

Michael imagined it could be difficult to tell someone to 'keep to their place' when they can set you on fire with their mind if they feel like it.

He had assumed, what he'd thought was perfectly reasonably, that the same dynamics that prevented the development of a _sex_ hierarchy should have applied to a _class_ hierarchy. Michael imagined the various labour disputes over the centuries, from medieval peasant revolts to the modern mostly useless trade unions — Michael _despised_ the so-called 'social partnership', Christian-democratic nonsense that, but not the point — would have gone a _lot_ differently if the tenants or workers could just pick up their wands and give the owners a big ol' _fuck you_ in the form of a curse in the face.

But, it turned out, it was more complicated than that. For one thing, the sort of environment labour had been and was often still done in on their side — with dozens of people on a farm or in a factory or whatever, going through a shared experience with people they saw regularly enough in close enough quarters to form camaraderie with — had been a necessary ingredient in the development of solidarity among working people. But work was different in the magical world. While agricultural and manufacturing work _did_ exist, the latter was far more limited in scope, and often the realm of specialised craftsmen...and the former were often _literal slaves_. Or, Síomha made the point that a lot of agricultural workers weren't human, often elves or nymphs or werewolves or whatever, various other magical beings, but that didn't change the fact that they were often _literal slaves_, Síomha, what the _fuck_?

Okay, fine, not _literal_ slaves, they didn't use that word, they had different language to describe it. But Michael didn't give a damn, if a person sold themselves, or their _children_, into more or less permanent bondage at the hands of another person who had more or less complete control over the rest of their lives, Michael didn't care what the fuck people _called_ it, that was _slavery_, pure and simple.

Because that was a thing that happened, apparently! In Ireland, in the UK! Poor people, who struggled to get by any other way, would sometimes decide they had to _sell themselves into slavery_! And it, just— This was perfectly legal! It happened all the time! Tricia Mullet had told him, when they'd spoken, that she knew a few _muggleborns_ who, with no connections in the magical world and no prospects to support themselves on either side, had done it out of desperation — _muggleborns_, Irish and British citizens! Just...

It was weeks ago now, that he'd learned about this, and Michael could not get over it, it was _horrifying_.

Because, for all that there was great wealth among the mages — and not just the nobility, most of the people he'd spoken to in Saoirse came from non-noble families who were _more_ than comfortable (the _least_ wealthy was probably Síomha's family, and the Ailbhes were _hardly_ what he'd call poor) — there was great poverty as well. Michael had had very little direct exposure to it, since the magical equivalent of slums or impoverished farming villages weren't _exactly_ the kind of places Saoirse was likely to bring him to, but at least he knew it existed now. And there were _a lot_ of them — the nobility, along with the number of non-noble but comfortable families that also moved in their circles, were _maybe_ ten per cent of the population. From what he'd been told, that other ninety per cent of magical society was practically a different world.

In some ways, the addition of magic made things _worse_ than the world he was more familiar with. He hadn't been wrong, when he'd assumed magic greatly reduced the labour needed in production, along with a variety of other costs — his naïveté had been in the assumption that this would naturally lead to a freer, more egalitarian society. That was, unfortunately, bullshit.

So far as he could tell, there were, essentially, four classes in magical Britain. There was the aristocracy, the people who owned the vast majority of the land, controlled all the various industries and trade with other nations — this control of sectors of the economy was often guaranteed by monopoly rights granted by the Wizengamot. This included all the nobility, yes, who themselves owned the vast majority of the land and dominated some of the more important trades, but wasn't _only_ the nobility. There was a sort of internal hierarchy within the aristocracy, with the wealthy commoners at the bottom, the Noble Houses above them, and the tiny Most Ancient Houses above them — this last group were, essentially, the closest thing the magical world had to royalty, with the obscene wealth and cultural prestige to go with it. Altogether, they were maybe a tenth of the population, twelve per cent at most.

The next were who Michael thought of as the bourgeoisie — the use of the term wasn't precisely accurate, but he needed to call them _something_, and it was just convenient. These were mostly professionals of one kind or another, families involved in trades (often going back generations) that required a significant degree of advanced training. Your enchanters, your potioneers, your healers, your alchemists, your authors, your arithmancers, your architects, and so forth and so on. Educators and researchers and the like also tended to be of this class, as well as most bureaucrats — while many of the Ministry departments tended to be led by aristocrats, the rest of the Ministry was mostly dominated by the bourgeoisie. The magical economy being what it was, a single productive professional with enough lucrative contracts (mostly with the aristocracy or others among the bourgeoisie) often took in enough to support several people, sometimes dozens, the rest of these families mostly preoccupied with academia, or the arts, or just fucking around and making nuisances of themselves. This class was another fifth to a quarter of the population.

And then there were who Michael thought of as the proletariat — though, again, the term wasn't precisely appropriate. These were people who needed to hire themselves out to the aristocracy and bourgeoisie to make a living. 'Unskilled' artisans and textile workers, janitorial and domestic staff, that sort of thing. Labour laws were pretty much nonexistent, so working conditions were generally terrible and workdays long, the pay often barely enough to survive. And sometimes not even that, since _housing_ law was also pretty much nonexistent, landlords got away with all kinds of shite, and basic things, food and clothing, could be surprisingly expensive. (These people often couldn't just go to the muggle world to get these things, since the magical world is so isolated few of them can pass for normal — each journey out of their secret enclaves risks prison time for threatening the Statute.) It didn't help that, since magic cut the labour needed in production so much, there simply weren't enough jobs to go around. Sometimes, it was bad enough people were forced to sell themselves into slavery just to survive. The proletariat were, approximately, half of the population.

Following along with the math, that meant he was missing fifteen to twenty per cent. These were the underclass, stateless persons and/or the underground economy, for the most part — the reserve army of the Revolution, as Michael had once (only sort of) jokingly referred to them when talking with Fionn. The underground economy involved a lot of drugs, prostitution, dark magic stuff, a large market in smuggled goods from other nations magical and nonmagical, everything he'd expect plus a couple things he wouldn't. Many of these things weren't _technically_ illegal, just considered unsavoury for proper, upstanding people to be seen participating in. Drugs and prostitution in particular were perfectly legal (for the most part), but the vast majority of the people actually working in these sectors were of the underclass...despite most of their customers and even _the owners_ being nobility and bourgeois.

Apparently, it was perfectly fine to _buy_ drugs and sex, and make money off of _other_ people buying them, but actually _selling_ them yourself was beneath the dignity of good, honourable people. This country honestly made Michael's head hurt sometimes.

The underclass included the people working in these undesirable sectors of the economy, both legal and illicit, but also people so _thoroughly_ marginalised even _that_ barely tolerable lifestyle was unavailable to them. _Literal slaves_ were included here, yes (mostly in agriculture and a minority of domestic workers), but also people whose _very existence_ was considered a crime, or else simply undesirable. Wilderfolk were a large proportion of this group who were thought undesirable — according to Fionn cat wilderfolk were very common along the fringes, a lot of the stray cats even in _non-magical_ cities were possibly wilderfolk, which was a crazy thought — as well as certain other species completely unrelated to humans, particularly goblins exiled from their society and nymphs — who were apparently a kind of faerie, like elves, but there were a few different races, it had been explained badly, Michael still didn't know what they were exactly — or just humans who had nowhere to go, refugees from even more fucked up countries or outlaws or people kicked out of their more well-off families, and then, most infamously, people whose existence was literally illegal, mostly werewolves and vampires — not the often murderous, ritually-created kind, but the ones who were people just born different, like Stacey. A lot of these people, particularly wilderfolk and nymphs, it was illegal to hire them (though both could be slaves, of course), and 'unregistered' werewolves and vampires could be executed by the state just for existing.

Seriously, he wasn't exaggerating. This shite was just that fucked up.

He was told a lot of these people — especially the non-humans, but also many of the people in this underground economy in general — sort of had their own little society going on, doing their best to organise and police themselves, take care of each other and even just _survive_, in corners of magical society the Ministry ignores, and in some cases is explicitly hostile to. According to Fionn, they'd developed quite a lot of resentment toward what they called the "daylit" world — "Starlight", as they called themselves, tended to keep to their own, and generally didn't react well to daylighters sticking their nose in their business.

Apparently, the closest ties most Starlighters had had with the rest of the magical world for generations had been with the Death Eaters...but that wasn't really what it sounded like. Bellatrix Lestrange — Sirius Black's cousin and (maybe?) Lyra's mother, the same infamous madwoman Michael had heard mentioned now and again — had supposedly considered Starlight to be allies, in the enemy-of-my-enemy sense, so had opened the resources available to her people to Starlight as well. Particularly, just letting Starlighters see the Death Eaters' healers whenever they needed to, free of charge, had _drastically_ improved their lives — and that wasn't even getting into letting them crash at a safe house on occasion, or letting them take from their food stores if they needed it. The collapse of the Death Eaters over a decade ago had seen the Starlit world spiral into destitution again, their loose association with the radicals only _worsening_ their political persecution in the years since, apparently conditions among the underclass of magical Britain were even worse than usual these days.

When Michael had had it explained to him that one of the leaders of the group he thought of as _magical Nazis_ had done more to improve the lives of the most vulnerable and the most destitute in magical society than had _literally anyone in generations_... Honestly, he had no fucking clue how to feel about that. The sociopolitical landscape of this country was just so fucked up, it was impossible to make sense of it.

Anyway, how Hogwarts fits into all this, that's what he was getting to. The education that was available to the different classes varied wildly. Among the underclass, including Starlight, they basically had no access to any education at all — according to Fionn, it wasn't unusual for a Starlighter to not be able to _read_. (Of course, some often had no interest in learning anyway, particularly wilderfolk, but that wasn't the point.) The proletariat had a loose network of community schools and informal tutoring, which mostly just covered the basics — reading, writing, and arithmetic, along with some basic magic. For the poor, that seven galleon price Ollivander charged for his wands was prohibitively expensive, so these mages often had hand-me-downs or wands from less reputable crafters, finicky and unreliable, and often no wand at all. These community schools generally focused on witchcraft — potions and elementary enchanting, that sort of thing — because wizardry was often not an option for their students, due to economic barriers.

The proper, official school system was mostly the realm of the bourgeoisie (and a few lucky proles). There were a few of these dotted across the islands, divided into primary schools, which mostly dealt with basic reading and writing and a little bit of witchcraft — the largest of these institutions was the one at the Academy somewhere in Ireland, even a lot of nobles went there — and secondary schools, which taught magic and history and the like, up through their OWL certifications, the lowest educational qualifications needed to enter the professional economy or the Ministry. Some fields required NEWT certifications and Masteries, especially the more academically rigorous fields like enchanting and alchemy, but this was a _much_ higher barrier of entry — most people needed to go through a formal apprenticeship to get these qualifications, which was only available to people who had a friend of the family in the field, or perhaps knew someone who knew someone. The exception was the Academy, which had NEWT programmes with relatively open enrollment; they were also the only institution with a Mastery programme in the entire country, the only alternative to landing an apprenticeship, but the available slots were relatively few, and getting one often came down to luck.

Or, Fionn admitted, bribes. Because of course.

Hogwarts was only open to the aristocracy. There were exceptions, in most cases families closely tied to one noble family or another — the Weasleys were a good example, Arthur's enrollment had been arranged by the Blacks, his wife's and their children's by the Prewetts — and also muggleborns, who Hogwarts was required to take by the terms of a treaty with the Wizengamot signed literally centuries ago. (Technically, only muggleborns who had no close magical relatives who could make other arrangements for them, but these days that was most of them.) Hogwarts was one of three institutions in the country that had a NEWT programme, the other being the Academy in Ireland and a school somewhere around Oxford the name of which Michael had forgotten, so it wasn't really unique qualifications-wise.

But it did have a certain cultural prestige no other institution did. The school had a special place in the history of the country — its founders had become semi-mythologised culture heroes in the centuries since, the reverence for them second only to the historical Merlin (and wasn't it wild that a _historical Merlin_ was a thing?). Sometimes not even second. They'd played an essential role in the Wizengamot's resistance to viking incursions, Hogwarts itself doing much to create a common sense of identity between the often divided Brits, Gaels, Saxons, and Danes of the islands. Michael had even heard it argued that the founding of the Wizengamot had been the birth of an _alliance_ between the magical peoples of the islands, but it was with Hogwarts that they truly started to become a nation.

It was debatable whether Hogwarts _actually_ provided the best education in the country. It _wasn't_ debatable that the institution had a cultural gravitas that nothing else could match. The castle was practically legendary, its symbols and characters commonplace. Among the rulership of the country, in the Wizengamot and the upper echelons of the Ministry, even among most of the larger industries, a Hogwarts education was almost universal, to the point that the culture of the school had permeated the top levels of society, enough it felt faintly hostile to people who had been educated elsewhere.

Placing one more barrier between the aristocracy and the rest of the country.

_That_ was what bothered Michael about Hogwarts, truly. It was not only an example of the ruling class of this country locking the common people away from the resources and the opportunities they needed to live their own lives free of exploitation and domination, but a pervasive _symbol_ of it — in some ways, even more clearly than the Wizengamot and the Ministry. Hogwarts was both a symbol of and a device by which the aristocracy reproduced their power over magical society.

Hogwarts existed as a monument to their past, yes, a relic from long ago, a formative time in the history of this country. It was also a monument to the aristocracy's own wealth and power. Walking these halls, the grandiose excess displayed throughout ever metre of its sprawling corridors and towering halls, room after room after room, the _absurd_ amount of resources that had gone into building this place, into maintaining it, the neglect preference for this institution had wrought on the education of the rest of the populace...the sheer, self-congratulatory _extravagance_ of the whole display...

Finally, Michael summarised his thoughts with, "This is some serious Versailles shite, is all. Doesn't it bother you?" He would have expected it to — Síomha's upbringing was relatively modest, compared to most of the magic-born segment of this institution's student body, and she didn't much appreciate the excesses of the country's aristocracy herself.

For a moment, they walked in silence, Síomha giving their surroundings several thoughtful looks. Then she shrugged. "I suppose I never thought about it that much. Hogwarts is just Hogwarts."

"Yes, well, that attitude right there is a part of the problem, isn't it?"

Síomha frowned at him, confused, but clearly decided not to ask.

Approaching the section of the castle the British delegation had been housed in — someone had hung the Union Jack (the ambassadorial version, with the coat of arms in the middle) and the royal standard (the Scottish version) off the wall, apparently to make the boundary clear — Michael noticed the people here were already up and moving, preparing for the events of the day. One sitting room he passed held multiple people in formal suits with red and white bits here and there, formal ambassadorial dress, in the middle of some kind of bickering argument, one poor sod in magical robes, probably a lower-level Ministry functionary, mobbed with questions from multiple directions at once.

Síomha had tensed a bit — her gait sharper, walking slightly closer to him and keeping a watchful eye on their surroundings — possibly because she'd noticed they were being followed. Their tail, wearing the now familiar uniform of the magical royal guard, wasn't exactly trying to be subtle, pacing down the hallway a few metres behind them. She probably could have cast some kind of concealment magic to hide herself from at least Michael's notice, which meant she'd consciously chosen to remain in the open. Whether that was because it might have caused a minor incident if Síomha had noticed they had a concealed shadow, or if the guard just wanted Síomha to be _very_ aware she was being watched, Michael couldn't say, but he was willing to lean toward the former.

The mages guarding the British delegation had been remarkably reasonable, all things considered, _especially_ compared to people from the magical government (or even Hogwarts staff, really). Michael hadn't spent much time at the castle so far, but he'd already gotten into multiple arguments with the Aurors (and this weekend Hit Wizards) posted at the school — they didn't like Saoirse, kept trying to find excuses to search the rooms in the castle given to the Irish delegation for magical contraband. One Auror had been such a belligerent racist arse Keane had complained about him to the Ministry, he'd ended up reassigned away from Hogwarts. Because of course, Michael wasn't really surprised. Perhaps because they were more used to dealing with non-magical folk, despite how closely they watched Saoirse the Brits' guards had been perfectly pleasant to Michael and Keane's people.

Of course, Síomha watching them in turn was also kind of just her job, so Michael tried to hold in his exasperation with her continued paranoia. Honestly, the way she acted sometimes — did she really think someone was going to jump out and try to kill him _in a school?_

The suite now serving as the Queen's residence — and, at the moment, her husband and children's (they'd left after Hallowe'en and returned yesterday) — was deep in the heart of the British delegation's quarters, the door inside marked only by the two guards flanking it, still and watchful. As he and Síomha approached, one of the guards moved, a wand appearing in hand. She cast some sort of spell, her lips moving for a moment — Michael should be close enough to hear what she was saying, but he didn't, the sound perhaps carried inside by that spell.

"Good morning," he chirped, coming to a stop a short distance away. "I'm expected, I believe?"

One of the mages nodded. "You are, Your Excellency. Langley is speaking with Her Majesty now — it shouldn't be but a moment."

It was hardly ten seconds, in fact, before the door clicked, pushed open to reveal William Langley standing just inside. Michael had vaguely known of him before — he wouldn't ordinarily recognise people attached to the British royals, but Langley had been in the news after a particularly messy incident not long ago — but he obviously wouldn't have known before the bodyguard was a mage. And, according to Síomha, literally hundreds of years old.

The existence of metamophs was still one of those things that was just _wild_ whenever he thought about it. People who could change anything about their body whenever they wanted, even going so far as _switching sexes_ if they felt like it, that was mad enough to be getting on with...but then these people also _didn't naturally age_. When Sarah had explained the concept to him, she'd said most metamorphs barely made it to puberty, would accidentally kill themselves during a transformation, which was apparently all too easy to do. But if a metamorph lived long enough to master their natural abilities, and made it through the emotional trauma of outliving their family and friends, they often just..._went on_.

Sarah herself — and also Salazar, who claimed to be _the_ Slytherin (though Fionn and several others Michael had spoken with were skeptical) — was _eleven hundred_ years old. Michael couldn't even _imagine_ what it must have been like living through that span of time, it was just overwhelming. He tried not to let it distract him, honestly.

"Sir William! And how are you this beautiful morning?"

Langley's lips twitched, but didn't quite pull all the way into a smile (or really anything else, for that matter). "Well enough, _a Thánaiste_." Michael and Langley interacted enough he was one of the people Michael had gotten to stop calling him _Your Excellency_ — he realised there was diplomatic protocol and all, he mostly followed the rules when expected, it just made his skin crawl a little when people called him things like that. "Her Majesty will be a moment longer, if you'd prefer to wait inside."

"I will, thank you." But before Michael could move, Síomha was slipping up, clearly intending to go in ahead of him.

Langley stepped back a little, his hand coming up to rest on the door at shoulder height, shifting in a way to imply he might close it any second. "That invitation was for _an Tánaiste_ alone, I'm afraid."

Her hands twitching, Síomha's shoulders hitched up a little — Michael couldn't see her face from this angle, but he was willing to bet she was glaring at him. "_An Tánaiste_ is not to be left unattended anywhere in the castle." Michael tried not to huff.

"He won't be left unattended. I will be there."

Síomha didn't answer right away, probably trying to think of a politic way to say that left her less than reassured. "It's alright, Síomha," he said, reaching out to put a hand on her shoulder; she twitched, tensing from surprise for a moment before relaxing again. Honestly, how keyed-up this woman was all the time, there was no way that was healthy. "Why don't you check in with Ciarán or something, see how things are going downstairs."

Slowly, Síomha turned to stare up at him over her shoulder, green eyes almost unnaturally bright and sharp. Michael was suddenly very aware of the fact that he was taller than her — he wasn't a particularly large man himself, and Síomha was a very intense sort of woman (and could also reduce him to paste with a wave of her hand), he usually didn't notice. For a long moment, Síomha just stared at him, her face completely unreadable.

Michael had the vague feeling something was going on here, but he had no idea what.

Finally Síomha sighed. "You have your beacons on you?"

"Yes, yes, we're all good here." Fionn had even renewed the blood-based tracking and monitoring spells Saoirse had on him the day before yesterday — he would know immediately if anything happened, no matter what wards might be in the way — but Michael wasn't supposed to talk about that sort of thing in front of other people. "You know, I don't think the world will end if you leave me alone for a half hour at a time now and again."

"I'm not so sure about that," Síomha drawled, one eyebrow ticking up. "You might have noticed, Michael, you have a remarkable talent for irritating powerful people."

"Thank you, you say the sweetest things. Now, go," brushing at the air with a hand, "talk to your people, maybe rest for two seconds, if you can manage it."

Síomha shot him a little glare, but couldn't seem to think of a response — or, more likely, couldn't think of a response that was appropriate to say in front of the Brits. With a final, warning glare at Langley, which he returned with a nod and a faint smile that was probably intended to be reassuring, she turned on her heel, her silly cloak whipping around her, and marched away down the hall.

The suite on the other side of the door, opening into a sizeable sitting room, looked pretty much the same as any of the others Michael had been in here. Save for a little square just inside the door, the floor was entirely covered in carpet — technically rugs pieced together and fitted perfectly into the shape of the room, dark, muted colours in swirly little designs — the plain stone of the walls entirely hidden by curtains in Hogwarts colours, black and red and gold and green and blue. Michael noticed the room was bare of most any enchanted paraphernalia, the portraits and random other nonsense all over the place completely absent, much like in his own — apparently, it could be relatively easy to spy through such things, or do something even more nefarious, Saoirse had insisted any such artefacts be removed and Langley's people (or whoever had handled the arrangements for the British) must have done the same.

There was a circle of furniture, stuffed sofas and armchairs in black and a deep blue, enough to seat perhaps a dozen people, a long, low table between them. They were set so sunlight would stream into the circle from the large, bronze-framed windows, but it was early in the morning yet, and the sky too overcast for the sun to really provide much light, the odd crystal-lamps along the walls doing the work instead. There was one door on the left side of the room, hung open enough to reveal a hint of white granite tile glimmering in the darkness — a bathroom for guests, presumably — a hallway on the right leading deeper into the suite, toward bedrooms and the like.

The largest difference between this suite and his own was a little chess table and a pair of wood chairs in a corner near the window. Michael vaguely remembered hearing at some point that Victoria played, so that wasn't too much of a surprise, that'd probably been one of her requests. Michael looped around to get a closer look at the board — looked like _someone_ had gotten their arse kicked.

Before Michael even managed to take a seat, someone came striding out of the hallway deeper into the suite. Bright and cheerful, "Ah, Mister Cavan! Good morning." The man was tall and willowy, a bit older than Michael (thought not by a whole lot), his face creasing a little with his friendly smile. Like most of the British delegation, he was in a suit, though his jacket was a vibrant royal red — no more elaborations than that, just the colour, it could be a perfectly ordinary business suit otherwise. He looked very familiar, though Michael couldn't quite...

Ah, it was Prince Kenneth, Victoria's husband. They'd met briefly, on two separate occasions — once on a trip to the North for some event or another back when Michael had been an ordinary TD, and then on Hallowe'en a couple weeks ago. Michael doubted they'd spoken more than a few sentences to each other total. He really didn't know that much about the bloke.

Also, he'd always thought "Kenneth" was sort of a strange name for an English prince — supposedly his mother was Scottish or something, Michael wasn't certain and also didn't care.

And then he was flouncing over to Michael, his hand extended to shake. Michael took it, hesitated slightly before speaking. If he was being honest, he wasn't entirely certain what the proper protocol was for the Prince Consort — _Highness_, he thought, like any other prince or princess, but he might be wrong. Most of the rest of the Irish delegation had been blatantly _not_ observing the proper protocol with Victoria, just on basic _you're not __**my**_ _queen_ principle. Michael himself tended to ignore the expected superlative niceties when it came to royalty in general, just on basic _fuck the entire idea of hereditary power_ principle — since becoming Tánaiste, he'd already offended the Spanish, the Swedes, the Saudis, the Kuwaitis, and the Jordanians, though the Dutch and the Japanese had been good sports about it. The Saudis had actually gone over Michael's head and complained to the President, who'd foisted dealing with him off on Barnie, who'd mostly just been irritated with Michael for being responsible for his most recent headache. (Barnie didn't like the Saudis any more than Michael did, most of the "reprimand" had been spent insulting the Saudis and the Israelis and the Americans over another bottle of whiskey.)

Point was, he wasn't about to address Kenneth with all that silly nonsense either. Michael wasn't entirely certain what _to_ say, though. He shouldn't just use his name, that would be crossing a line even for Michael, but... Eh, to hell with it. "Good morning to you too, sir. Or as much a one as it ever is up here."

"Ah," Kenneth scoffed, releasing Michael's hand to flip it dismissively at the nearby window, and the dismal dawn visible outside. "This isn't so bad. Just you wait until January — I've heard it gets terribly cold up here."

Michael had heard the same, though he wasn't certain he believed it — it never really got _that_ cold in Scotland, even up in the mountains. Colder than Ireland in the winter, sure, the sea kept them from seeing extremes in either direction, but he didn't think the difference was really that great. People in Sweden or Norway, or hell, even around the American Great Lakes, would probably find the British idea of _terribly cold_ just laughable. "I suppose this is why some clever bloke at some point invented warming charms."

"Yes, yes, God bless our forgotten hero. Come, sit with me for a moment — you've recently returned from a visit to India, yes?"

He had, yes. It had been...complicated. It was possible he'd gotten into a shouting match with the Prime Minister over his economic liberalisation programmes. Oops.

Though, he'd been a hundred per cent serious about them possibly needing to rethink their trade relationship if he was going to open up India's economy like this. Rao had also had a point saying Ireland didn't have the leverage to force him to back down, which, _obviously_, Ireland was tiny, that hadn't been what Michael was saying.

If he was being perfectly honest, Michael thought nationalism was a fool's game. He'd always thought the idea of being overly concerned with lines arbitrarily drawn in the sand was a bit silly — any claims of people on one side of the line being somehow fundamentally different were always blatantly fictional, self-adulating myth at best and racist pseudoscience at worst — but it was even more pointless these days. Modern transportation and communications technology being what they were, the proliferation of sweeping trade agreements and the penetration of international financial concerns... The world was a smaller place than ever had it been, and it was swiftly growing yet smaller. And this modern experiment of the nation-state might have led to the firming of borders to _people_, but they remained permeable to capital.

This wasn't the sort of thing he would admit in public, but if Michael had been alive at the time, he honestly wasn't certain if his sympathies would have been with the Revolution. Or, they would have been, but not for the same reasons. If they were granted a significant degree of home rule, along with significant power within a sympathetic government in London, that would have been sufficient for him. But the chances of _that_ had been basically zero, and Sinn Féin had essentially been the sole leftist organisation of any influence back then, so he likely would have ended up with them anyway.

In any practical sense, socialism needed to be an international project — due to the internationalisation of modern capitalism, opposition to it also needed to be international. He wasn't talking nonsense along the lines of one world order conspiracies that were _totally not about the Jews_ or whatever, no, but alliances and mutual support and international coordination would certainly be a necessity to effectively oppose international capital. It was kind of funny, some years ago now he'd given a speech at University College Cork (for some event or other, he forgot), with a bit about how greater cultural exchange, developing closer relationships between people all over the world, would be necessary to build the common identity as a single, united human race they would need to face the challenges of the modern world. At the time, he'd gotten a lot of praise for the thing even from a fair number of...the cosmopolitan bourgeoisie, let's say. Apparently, they hadn't realised that by _the challenges of the modern world_ he'd mostly been referring to capitalism and the damage it wreaked — imperialist contests here and there, wars over natural resources, the growing spectre of environmental devastation...

Also, no kidding, he'd literally quoted Lenin at one point, that should really be a red flag for those types. Heh, _red flag_...

Anyway, Michael was less concerned with nationhood or the integrity of their borders or some such nonsense than he was with the physical conditions experienced by the people whose care he had been entrusted with. He thought the very idea of a border was childish, but if taking a more inward-facing, protectionist sort of stance was what was more in the interest of their people in a particular situation, well, that was what he would do. The calculation really was that simple, as difficult as that might have been for Rao to believe.

The increasing sophistication of India's infrastructure, and the liberalisation of both their internal economy and international trade, that could easily make things between them...complicated. With how low transportation costs were now, with how much higher the standard of living in Ireland was, how much lower the wages in India, it would be all too easy to imagine businessmen in Ireland deciding it just made fiscal sense to relocate their operations overseas. Similar things had already started happening in other European countries, the US, industry trickling over into the third world. Ireland had benefited from this at first, in fact — for some time, it'd been cheaper to produce goods in Ireland than the rest of Europe, attracting investment from their neighbours, and there'd been a couple decades there when they'd been very attractive to American tech and medical firms. But now that they had that development in local industry, letting it go would be foolish.

The quickly accelerating deindustrialisation of the West, sure, it was good for the owner class, kept profits up and prices down. But the social consequences would inevitably catch up with them — _long_ after it was already too late to reverse course. Michael would rather not help lead Ireland down that road. Luckily, he'd mostly gotten Fianna Fáil (or at least Barnie) to agree, and they even had a number of Irish corporations on the same page, so, it seemed to be going...okay-ish.

Now, if only previous governments hadn't locked them into a monetary union with the rest of Europe and if left-leaning countries all over the world weren't surrendering to international pressure and liberalising their economies. That was going to make things...difficult, in the near future.

(Personally, Michael thought signing up for a common European currency issued by a central bank Ireland had no regulatory authority over was a _fucking terrible_ idea, but the ink on the Maastricht Treaty had already been dry when he'd taken over as Tánaiste, and he couldn't just pull out of it unilaterally. More the pity.)

Rao had pointed out, reasonably, that with the common market in Europe Ireland didn't even have the _authority_ to unilaterally alter their trade relationship with India, but that was giving him _far_ too little credit. He could find people to rules-lawyer this to death, hold it up in international courts for _years_, if he had to. If it _really_ came down to it, they could simply nationalise any business that attempted to move overseas — _that_ would be an extreme measure though, it would be more difficult to hold onto the strong majority in the Dáil they would need, and would create diplomatic difficulties with the Americans and the rest of Europe. But, if he played his cards right, it shouldn't be difficult to keep both political and public pressure high enough to prevent capital flight to the third world. Especially with Fianna Fáil on their side, along with most of the smaller parties — Sinn Féin, for example, would fucking _love_ mainstream politics taking that kind of leftist, protectionist swing — and especially since almost no matter what India did they wouldn't be barred from access to cheap Indian goods, they could just ship them in indirectly from the rest of Europe.

It had been an _extremely_ contentious conversation, was what he was saying.

But Kenneth didn't really want to know about all that — it _did_ come up, but the wealthy Englishman just kind of huffed good-naturedly, as though thinking to himself _you silly socialist and your silly socialism_. Instead, they discussed the continued endemic violence in the country, particularly between Hindus and Muslims. The Bombay riots weren't so long ago, and things hadn't really gotten better (despite Indian officials' claims to the contrary). And at this rate, it was only a matter of time before BJP overtook the INC as the dominant political party in India, which was...not a _good_ sign, to put it mildly.

Though irritatingly Kenneth, like many Westerners Michael had spoken to, seemed to lay the blame for this violence on the Muslims, that the Hindu nationalists might do horrible things now and again, sure, but they were largely reacting to attacks on their people by Muslims. Besides, India was _their_ country, was it so unbelievable that people would react badly to people coming in and causing trouble? _Their_ country, Christ, Hindus and Muslims had coexisted in the subcontinent for _centuries_, literally since the Middle Ages, speaking as though the Muslim minority were _obviously_ foreign to the country was absurd — many of them had ancestors living on the same land they did going back _generations_, longer than many Irishmen could reasonably claim. And that coexistence had been _mostly_ peaceful — violence had cropped up occasionally, yes, but much the same had occurred between Christians in Europe in the same time period, such was humanity — until the British had waltzed on in and _intentionally_ played up religious and ethnic divisions to keep the natives focused on each other, rather than the foreign empire exerting control over their lands. And the partition of India, arbitrary national borders sketched through the subcontinent, had just made it worse — and that hadn't even been fifty years ago.

Portraying any one "side" of this — as though there truly were _sides_, honestly — as the perpetrator and the other as victim was, just, _childish_. There were criminals and victims among both Hindus and Muslims, both "sides" were at fault, failing to acknowledge the reality of the situation would only make it _harder_ to achieve lasting peace on the subcontinent.

But it probably wasn't a good idea for Michael to get into a _second_ shouting match with a foreign dignitary in the space of a week, so he did his best to contain his own frustration.

Distracted by his irritating conversation with the Prince, as well as his own efforts to conceal his irritation, Michael entirely failed to notice Victoria walking into the room until she appeared behind the sofa, looming over the back of Kenneth's head. She leaned over the back of the sofa, muttered into Kenneth's ear something Michael didn't catch — it _was_ quiet, but he suspected it wasn't even English, probably Welsh. Kenneth said something in response, that was _definitely_ Welsh, and popped up to his feet. "If you'll excuse me, Mister Cavan, I'm needed in the back." With a nod of farewell, he circled around the sofa and disappeared deeper into the suite.

Victoria took his place, dropping a file onto the table with a plop before sinking into a seat, more or less exactly where Kenneth had been. She was in her Lady Protector get-up again (which would never stop being funny, she clearly enjoyed making the mages squirm as much as he did) — mage-style boots and trousers and tunic, shimmering black traced with red and gold, though the multicoloured cloak was missing at the moment. Probably waiting to put that on until it was time to leave, the things did look _very_ inconvenient.

Before either of them could say anything, there was a subtle pop, a tray bearing tea and plain sugar biscuits appearing on the table a little to Michael's left. Victoria's lips twitched. "Thank you, Nenna," she said to the empty air — her exasperation mostly hidden, she must not have expected that.

"The elves been fussing over you as much as me, I take it." Michael leaned forward, plucked one of the biscuits off the tray. They were going to breakfast any minute now, but the biscuits the elves made were _excellent_, sweet and buttery and not nearly too dry. Michael could probably eat these things until he gave himself diabetes and never get tired of them.

"If one were to put it mildly. They do so hover, especially when the children are here." Pouring herself a cup, she said, "I had considered telling them they needn't go to so much effort, but I ultimately decided against it. It isn't as though they are making a nuisance of themselves, and I wouldn't want to cause offence — I suspect the elves consider what they are doing to simply be the expected hospitality owed to guests of our station." Victoria tilted the pot toward him, a single eyebrow ticking up a little.

Michael shook his head, waving his biscuit-bearing hand. "I've never developed much of a taste for it, I'm afraid. I know, I'm a sorry Irishman." Ireland actually consumed more tea _per capita_ than Britain did — not by a large margin, but there it was. Though the coffee the elves brewed was nearly as good as their biscuits.

Before Michael could hardly blink, a second, smaller tray appeared on the table, presumably coffee for him. He failed to hold in an amused scoff.

Once they were both set up with their completely unnecessary pre-breakfast, Victoria spoke first. "I understand you requested this meeting, but I intended to speak with you once you returned to Hogwarts myself. Before we come to that matter, however, it has been brought to my attention that there are...irregularities, regarding your return flight from India."

Of course British intelligence knew about that, Michael couldn't even pretend to be surprised. He _was_ a little surprised they'd told the Queen, but perhaps they'd been aware she'd be meeting with him later, had decided to arm her with awkward questions to prod him with. "Oh? What kind of irregularities?"

"The duration of the flight was several hours longer than anticipated, to start with."

"My, my, is the United Kingdom _spying_ on me?"

Victoria's lips twitched. "I'm sure I couldn't speak to the activities of a certain mutual ally of ours."

Translation: _the Americans are spying on __**everybody**__, obviously._ "Yes, well, these things happen sometimes. I'm sure you're familiar with unexpected deviations from your schedule."

"It was noted to me that your flight path happened to cross over Iran."

"I would expect so — Iran _is_ between India and Ireland, I understand." Victoria seemed less than impressed, one of her eyebrows ticking up in a doubtful look. "And, is there something wrong with that? Last I checked, there's no relevant travel restriction on Iran at the moment. If there were, I imagine that would be news to our embassy in Tehran."

With a slightly exasperated sort of tone, Victoria said, "Exactly so — if you intend to visit Iran for any legitimate purpose, you needn't do so covertly." Well, there was really nothing to say to that — she wasn't _wrong_. She took a slow, casual sip of tea. "And how is George Habash doing these days?"

Michael smiled. "Suffering from ill health, I hear. He and Arafat are both getting up there in years, I imagine neither of them will be around much longer. But I'm not certain why you're asking me about him — I've never met Mister Habash myself."

There was another eyebrow twitch, a hint of surprise. He internally snarked that perhaps she'd expected him to refer to the infamous Palestinian Communist as _Comrade Habash_ — really, Victoria, he had more tact than _that_. "We've heard rumours Habash has had some significant contact with Iran of late."

"You're thinking of Hamas — Habash is a secular Christian, he's not likely to get along with the Iranians very well."

"Yet, last we've heard, his Popular Front has entered into an alliance with Hamas."

"An alliance of convenience, perhaps. Their primary point of agreement is a rejection of Oslo and opposition to any two-state solution, and especially one dictated by Israel. Once the Oslo process fails, as it inevitably will, I expect the P.F.L.P. will drift back toward Fatah, their more natural allies." Relatively speaking, anyway, social democrats would always be willing to stab socialists in the back given sufficient incentive to do so — the harsh suppression of the communist uprisings in the early days of the Weimar Republic and the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht were the rule, not the exception. "Besides, I truly don't see how this is relevant. I didn't meet with Habash in Iran, nor anyone else representing Palestine."

"But you did meet with _someone_."

Obviously — as Victoria had pointed out a moment ago, he needn't have visited Iran covertly if he hadn't intended to have an under-the-table meeting with someone...impolitic, let's say. He'd been meeting with _Kurdish_ socialists, not Palestinian ones. Iran had really been the most convenient place to meet — anywhere else, news of the meeting was almost certain to get back to the Americans, and they would probably inform Turkey, who would doubtlessly kick up a fuss about it. Also, Iran tolerated Kurdish nationalism, but Iraq _definitely_ did not, so letting knowledge of the meeting get to Saddam would likely interfere with Ireland's role in the continuing peace process between the two countries after their recent war...not that the _brutal_ sanctions the Americans had enacted against both countries to such devastating effect, especially in Iraq, were making that necessary work any easier, the bloodthirsty _madmen_...

Anyway, expecting to have much success negotiating a settlement between the Kurds and the three countries they constituted a significant minority in — Turkey, Syria, and Iraq — was about as insane as Holst's backchannel attempt at negotiating peace in the Levant. But he had already gotten a small number of European and Asian countries to (quietly) sign on to the effort, and he was (subtly) working on Egypt and Jordan, so. They could probably get Syria to consent to _something_, especially with assistance from Egypt and Jordan, and Iraq if they could get the Americans to lift sanctions as part of the deal, but Turkey was going to be a problem. It was _possible_, he guessed, just absurdly unlikely. Especially since it would probably _also_ require renegotiating the Syrian–Iraqi border on top of everything else... Yeah, it was a mess.

He had to have at least one insane long-term project to occupy himself as Tánaiste, right? And hey, if he managed to pull it off, he would have managed to bring socialism back into the public discourse in a (hopefully) positive way, and there would almost certainly be a Nobel Peace Prize in it for him. He could dream.

But he _certainly_ couldn't admit that to Victoria — if she told anyone in the British government, they might tell the Americans, who would then tell the Turks, and the whole thing would implode before it could really get going. With a warm, slightly crooked smile, Michael said, "With all due respect, ma'am, that's none of your damn business."

Victoria let out a low scoff, but Michael noticed the hints of an amused smile twitching at her lips. "Have it your way, then. But know that, should you choose to keep us in the dark as to just what you're playing at, don't expect us to help you deal with the American response should it blow up in your face."

"Oh, I don't." He doubted they would anyway — the chances the current Tory government would support his scheme, even without the context of having hidden it from them, weren't particularly good. There were reasons he hadn't brought this to his British counterpart in the first place. "But we aren't going to get anywhere discussing that today. Was there something else you wanted to talk about?"

It didn't seem like Victoria was particularly pleased leaving it there, but she didn't argue. "You might be aware, under the terms of the Treaty of Anglesey we are obligated to inform each other of any developments which might threaten the Statute of Secrecy."

He was, in fact. That particular treaty had come up a lot lately, mostly where the magical government's obligations to theirs were concerned, but Ireland and the UK (and also France) had obligations to each other as well. The Treaty of Anglesey 1913 had essentially been a renegotiation of the Treaty of Westminster 1817 (itself a renegotiation of the Treaty of Coventry 1690) — it basically set the terms of the enforcement of the Statute of Secrecy within the Isles, and which governments were responsible for resolving which problems. (It had needed to be altered slightly upon Irish independence two decades later, but the law currently in force was basically the same as agreed upon in 1913.)

Though, as Michael understood it, the obligations Ireland and the UK had to each other were actually very minor — they were both responsible for holding up the non-magical end of the bargain in their respective territories, which didn't really involve the other much. If he recalled correctly, there was a sort of contingency built in where, if the mages informed _one_ of them of a potential threat to the Statute within their lands, they were supposed to inform the other, just in case the mages failed to do it themselves. The only other case he could think of was a...an escape clause, let's say. If either party were planning on doing something that might threaten the Statute, they were to tell each other first. Under the original Treaty of Coventry, all parties (just Britain and France at the time) were required to come to a consensus of they planned to _intentionally_ end Secrecy — technically, the mages _or_ the non-mages could end Secrecy at any moment if they wanted to — though subsequent agreements expanded that to a consensus among _all_ the nations associated with the ICW, which made it far less likely that—

Wait a second. Victoria must have wanted to meet with him to warn him Britain might (accidentally) kill Secrecy. That was... Well, that was serious fucking business, wasn't it. "Ah, what happened?"

"Do you recall the incident regarding the acromantulae in the Forest?"

Michael scowled — _of course_ he remembered, they were enormous, magical, man-eating _talking spiders!_ Learning there were a bunch of them _outside of a school_ in the Scottish Highlands wasn't the sort of thing he was likely to forget. "I remember. I was under the impression Cassie Lovegood was taking care of it." Assisted by Lyra and the wilderfolk and centaurs who also lived in the Forest, but most people focused on Cassie.

"She has committed to dispose of the nests on school grounds, yes, and I have every confidence that she will by the end of next year. Lovegood does appear a very capable woman, from all I have heard." That was certainly _one_ way to put it... "However, the mages leave the margins of the Valley largely unmonitored."

"You... You're suggesting they might have escaped into the countryside." He started at a sudden thought, nearly spilling his coffee. Rather than keep it to hand, he set his cup down on the table — he had the feeling this was going to be a difficult conversation. "Those military exercises we've heard about in the Highlands, they're not _just_ exercises are they?"

Victoria's lips curved a little, shifting into a grim smile. "No, they are not." Reaching into the file, she pulled out a single, glossy page — a map showing the immediate area, the western half of Ross-shire and the Shire of Inverness, the ragged curve of the Isle of Skye visible at the western edge. The approximate location of the Hogsmeade Valley was marked on the map, along with a few nearby settlements both magical and not.

There were also three dots in an angry red, accompanied by a few numbers: an area in square metres, distance from the nearest settlements in kilometres, an estimated population count — split into adults, juveniles, and eggs — and a probability the entire nest had been exterminated — all in the high nineties, but none at one hundred per cent.

Mary mother of Christ, they'd actually found acromantula nests _outside_ of the Valley. That wasn't good... "The Army send in their boys to take care of them, or did you get magical assistance?"

"They managed on their own," Victoria said, shaking her head a little. "It appears grenades and flamethrowers are quite effective against acromantulae."

With a little half-cough half-laugh, "Er, I'm pretty sure those are effective against pretty much anything."

She gave him another grim, humourless smile. "They are currently making sweeps of the surrounding area, but they believe they have successfully exterminated the acromantulae, having sustained only light injuries themselves." Oh. Oh, that was good. Well, not _good_, he guessed, but it could have been a whole lot worse. "There are a number of reported missing persons in the area, but no more than the local authorities would expect. They are on the lookout for human remains, but none have been discovered, so far."

Michael nodded. That was also good — if the mages' negligence had set _man-eating spiders_ loose and they'd _actually_ killed British citizens, the UK would feel obligated to express official displeasure with the magical government, which could quickly get...complicated. Especially since Michael would almost certainly take the UK's side, putting additional pressure on them, and the French would probably get in on the action too. From what he'd heard from his counterparts in the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, they were more or less comfortable with the other two magical governments sharing their territory, but they had long-standing issues with the Wizengamot. (Michael was _shocked_, honestly.) "I'm surprised you had enough men in the know to carry off an operation like this."

"We didn't," Victoria said, flat and casual. "As of this moment, the entirety of the Twenty-Two S.A.S. has been read in, along with select units from the Fifty-First, and relevant segments of the personnel at the Ministry of Defence, M.I. Five, and G.C.H.Q."

"Christ..." She had to be talking about, what, a few hundred people? The non-magical governments had sole discretion as to how many people they needed to have in the know to maintain Secrecy, but they were _supposed_ to keep the number as small as possible, so as to reduce the possibility of leaks. Bringing in that many people all at once was...a lot. "You're concerned you'll have leaks?"

"In part. Those who have been read in have been warned that the existence of the magical world remains classified, and that any who disclose whatever they may learn will be prosecuted accordingly — there may be leaks, but that is not my primary concern. No, my primary concern is far more short-term." Victoria pulled another sheet out of her file, placing it atop the first.

It was a map, pulled from a satellite image, of the Hogsmeade Valley — one that hadn't been doctored for popular consumption, the village and the sprawling, asymmetrical castle over the lake visible. Along the periphery of the Valley was some notation Michael recognised at a glance: icons representing military units and camps, notched lines standing for barricades and the like. Some of the information that should be included in such a thing, unit designations and troop numbers and callsigns and so on, had been scrubbed — presumably, this was a sanitised version of the battle plan whoever was actually in charge had permitted Victoria show him — but he didn't need to be told to know what this was. "You're putting Hogsmeade under siege? You realise that's impossible, right? They can still pop in and out whenever they like."

"The mages are not being put under siege; the acromantulae are," Victoria averred, as though the mages would recognise the difference. "It has been determined that the mages cannot be trusted to contain the acromantulae to their enclave, and that Lovegood putting additional pressure on them will only increase escapes into the countryside. The purpose of the encirclement is to intercept fleeing acromantulae. The presence of the mages, and whatever their response may be, is secondary."

Well, she wasn't wrong about any of that, he guessed. Or, whoever had done the determining, anyway — Victoria might have passed along the information about the acromantulae in the first place, but she obviously wouldn't have been involved in deciding what the hell they were going to do about it. "And they plan to just...sit there? Camp around the Valley for, what, maybe as long as a year?" Given that much time, the mages weren't going to _not notice_ there were armed men surrounding the Valley, Michael doubted they could go on that long without _some_ incident cropping up.

"I'm told we are resolved to wait and see how things progress, for the moment. And, truly, the mages should feel fortunate our response is this restrained — I have it on good authority the possibility of occupying the Valley and rooting out the acromantulae ourselves was discussed. I believe that plan is still on the table, in fact, though only as a last resort."

...So, the British military leadership had, just, casually discussed the idea of _starting a war_ with the mages. That wouldn't be their _intent_ occupying Hogsmeade, of course, but it's _definitely_ what would have happened. Perfect, that was _just perfect_. Michael understood why Victoria was bringing this to him as a threat to the Statute of Secrecy now, Christ...

"Right. Okay." Frowning down at the table, Michael rubbed at the back of his neck for a moment. What the hell was he supposed to say to _that?_ "I hope the Defence Council realises, sure, they might think it's a last resort, but just having the army sitting around outside town for _months_ could escalate, easy."

"They are aware, yes." It was hard to tell, the expression was very faint, but Michael thought he caught a hint of...not _anxiety_, exactly, but at least wariness. "As I understand it, the possibility of an armed conflict breaking out between the United Kingdom and the United Council of Celtic Peoples," the 'proper' term for the magical nation most people just called _Britain_, "has been judged to be an acceptable risk."

Michael opened his mouth to respond, closed it again. "That seems...extreme, to risk going to war with the mages over these bloody talking spiders getting out. If they'd wiped out a village or something, sure, I'd understand it then, but nobody even got hurt."

"It's not about the acromantulae, truly." Victoria set down her tea, let out a thin sigh. "It has long been believed that our arrangement with the mages of the Isles has become...untenable. Certain circles have been harbouring disaffection for their counterparts on the other side since the Second World War — despite their insistence the War was a _muggle_ affair, the conflicts occurring on both sides had a tendency to spill over into each other, and some have never forgiven the mages their refusal to enter the magical side of the war. I'm uncertain whether our mages joining the resistance against Grindelwald and his Communalist allies would have aided us in our fight against Nazi Germany at all, but I do understand the sentiment."

Michael agreed. So far as he could tell, Grindelwald's 'alliance' with Hitler had been no more meaningful than the UK's 'alliance' with the Ministry — what the hell was Grindelwald supposed to do, _not_ deal with the only functional non-magical government in the region? Yeah, he was sure people would think _much_ better of Grindelwald if he'd severed any contact with the Nazis and just let the Statute of Secrecy implode, that would have gone over _much_ better.

"There were some who wished to...alter our arrangement with our magical cousins even then. And such attitudes have only grown more common in the decades since. I'm uncertain whether you are aware that, during their recent civil war, the mages failed in their treaty obligation to insulate our people from magical harm, time and time again. We aren't even certain how many were killed — Adjustment would often cover it up, doctoring the scene so as to appear a mundane accident and wiping the minds of witnesses, before first responders could even get to the scene. Though they had a habit of obliviating the first responders as well, paramedics and law enforcement alike," she added, with an irritated sort of drawl.

So, not only did the mages fail to stop these incidents from happening in the first place, but they also scrubbed the scene so British authorities couldn't gather the intelligence necessary to find any patterns to the attacks and take steps to prevent them on their own. Yeah, Michael could understand why that might be irritating.

"I have been informed that the Defence Council had lost any remaining forbearance for the mages, and was in the process of drawing up plans to invade when the news of Voldemort's defeat reached us. It was decided that we would put those plans on hold and observe how conditions progressed from there, whether such extreme action was yet necessary to be determined at a later date. The political developments over the last months, though the end result remains uncertain, have been encouraging, but it has not alleviated the concerns held by many that the mages are unwilling or unable to uphold their obligation to insulate the people of our country from magical harm. If they cannot, or _will_ not, our interest in continuing to uphold the Statute of Secrecy weakens, with each passing year.

"We are not at a point where we are willing to _start_ a conflict with the Wizengamot. But if the mages escalate against us over our attempt to contain the acromantulae where they will not — a duty which, by the treaties determining the relationship between our peoples going back _centuries_, should rightly belong to them — we _will_ respond in kind." Giving him a hard, flat look, more grim than Michael was sure he'd ever seen her, Victoria said, "The United Kingdom will not _start_ this war, Michael, but if the mages force our hand we will _end_ it."

...Well.

Michael picked up his cup of coffee again, mostly to have something to do with his hands while he gathered his thoughts. If he was being perfectly honest, he wasn't particularly _surprised_. He hadn't known much about the mages' war with their Dark Lord and his followers with the silly names — not to mention that he was called a _Dark Lord_ in the first place, was this a shitty fantasy novel or what — but Fionn had filled him in some, and... Well, it wasn't good. _Many_ muggles had died — hundreds, perhaps even thousands. It had been a conscious strategy on the part of the Death Eaters — force the Ministry to spread itself thin reacting to their attacks and covering them up to preserve the Statute, committing so much manpower to the effort that they were practically helpless to defend themselves. _Failing_ to do so would have had the ICW coming in to take over, which nobody in the Wizengamot wanted, they'd been kind of cornered on that one.

Given that the Death Eaters _had_ been doing it on purpose, Michael wasn't surprised the Ministry hadn't been able to keep up, prevent such incidents from occurring as the Treaty of Anglesey obligated them to (to the best of their ability, at least). It also wasn't much of a surprise that they hadn't bothered to keep the Brits as up to date on what was happening as they should, with how rushed and panicked they must have felt.

It was understandable, but Michael _also_ wasn't surprised that the UK hadn't been inclined to be charitable about it — after all, it _had_ been their people being killed. Also, there was the whole 'muggleborn' genocide thing. The Death Eaters had been intentionally targeting 'muggleborns' for torture, rape, and murder — a subset of the population who were, by their very nature, British citizens — and they hadn't done a whole lot to stop it. According to Fionn, they'd hardly even _tried_ — after all, they were _only muggleborns_, much of the ruling class of magical Britain didn't give a single shite what happened to them, especially not when they were concerned with ensuring their own survival. Private citizens had done as much as they could, of course, squirreling 'muggleborns' and their families away into safehouses or smuggling them out of the country, but those efforts had never really had official sanction, the Ministry (and Wizengamot) had supposedly been _completely fucking useless_.

And then this disaster with the _deadly talking spiders_ comes up — it really was a bloody miracle nobody had died, the things had been hanging around in the forest for _decades_, Christ. If the UK had lost all patience for the magical government at this point, if they didn't trust them to hold to their end of the deal, well, Michael didn't blame them. In their position, he'd probably be recommending to Barnie they do something similar.

If it _did_ come to a fight — which was certainly possible, given how very jingoistic mages were they likely wouldn't react well to a non-magical army surrounding Hogsmeade — Michael didn't doubt that the UK could conquer magical Britain with little difficulty. According to Fionn, magical shields were pretty much useless against modern weaponry. There _were_ barriers against physical force that were designed to block projectiles, but military-grade firearms concentrated such a large amount of force into such a small point that only the most powerful of mages could hope to hold up against them — and even those, a sniper should be able to punch through without any problem. And that wasn't even getting into explosives. Mages had their own big guns, blasting curses and the like, but grenades and anti-tank rifles and rockets and so forth were even more effective, and also required less skill to use. If nothing else, the mages would run out of people who could throw around shite like that _long_ before the UK would.

And that wasn't even bringing in tanks, or _bombs_. As much as mages might brag about how amazing the wards of Hogwarts were, Michael doubted the castle would stand up to a sustained bombardment for more than a couple minutes.

The mages' greatest advantage was, as he understood it, in their transportation and in the use of mind-influencing magics — the nightmare scenario was a hostile mage apparating into a secure location and dominating the minds of high-ranking personnel. That was unlikely, however. The UK had their own loyal mages — Langley and his people, along with disaffected 'muggleborns' and their families — who had long ago warded various government properties against unauthorised magical transportation. The Brits were _aware_ of the threat of subversion, obviously, he would bet they'd ramp up magical security around relevant staff to ward off any such attempt.

And, those kinds of magics were bloody useless on the battlefield. Most mind-influencing charms that could be cast from long range would be intercepted even with the most basic body armour — they were usually useless on mages wearing enchanted dueling grab as well. The more insidious sorts could only be done from short range, sometimes even requiring eye contact, and they quite simply weren't going to be able to get close enough to pull it off without getting nailed with a dozen bullets.

If the UK intended to occupy the entirety of magical Britain, there were only a small number of public places they needed to take. Charing in London, where the primary Ministry offices were also located, as well as a few other similar enclaves in major cities here and there, the Wizengamot Hall and a few nearby locations in Anglesey. (Though they might just leave the Wizengamot alone, apparently it was well magically isolated.) There was one major magical settlement in Ireland, but Saoirse was big there, they'd probably take the opportunity of the chaos in Britain to split off anyway, so the UK didn't have to worry about them. And then the Hogsmeade Valley, and that was pretty much it.

That would leave all the various private enclaves, old magical estates and family compounds and the like, they were too many and too isolated for the UK to knock them off individually. _But_, they could just _negotiate_ with them individually, they didn't need to wipe them out. If the UK had already taken over all the _public_ areas in the magical world, and had dismantled the government that united them, he imagined it shouldn't be difficult to get these little pockets of mages to see reason — especially since these enclaves were where _their families lived_, they'd probably want to avoid the war coming to them if at all possible.

The point was, if it came down to a war between the UK and the Wizengamot, Michael had absolutely no doubt which side would come out on top. He'd be shocked if it took longer than a week or two.

It was notable that Victoria hadn't said they planned to _intentionally_ end the Statute of Secrecy. They simply didn't trust the mages to abide by the terms of it anymore, so the UK was taking action to protect itself. They didn't plan to _intentionally_ go to war with the mages in the process, but if they had to they would. And, should they do so, they didn't plan to _intentionally_ reveal the existence of magic to the world — Michael assumed the forces involved in the invasion would be sworn to secrecy. But, well, leaks happen, there's no way to guarantee the truth _won't_ get out.

And if it did? Oh well. It wasn't as though the Wizengamot and the Ministry were holding up their end of the bargain anyway. In the present state of affairs, the Statute was hindering their ability to protect themselves from magical threats more than it was safeguarding them. There was no reason for the UK to keep up their end of the bargain if the mages weren't going to uphold theirs.

Michael did see the logic of what was going on here. It was just...big.

Like, incomprehensibly big. When the existence of magic was revealed to the world at large — which it would inevitably be, whether this situation in the Valley blew up or not, Secrecy was ultimately doomed to fail — it was going to change _everything_. There was really no overestimating the potential consequences of such a fundamental shift in the world, there was no telling what would happen.

Personally, Michael didn't think it would be nearly as much of a disaster as many people feared. People worried there would be much fear of magic, hatred, especially motivated by religious types — and, yes, there probably would be. But think that through for a second: if you have some crazies out to kill some mages...what are they gonna _do_ about it? The mages had grown very accustomed to living in isolation _generations_ ago — that everyone knew they existed now didn't mean they would _stop_.

Private citizens might not be able to do much, but _governments could_. Some people he'd talked to particularly brought up some of the more...difficult regions in the world, theocratic governments here and there, particularly in Africa and the Near East. But, the thing was, these governments _already knew magic existed_ — they cooperated with the mages in their lands to maintain Secrecy, were in fact glad to do so, so long as the mages kept magic _well_ away from them. There was truly no reason this arrangement would need to change in a theoretical post-Statute landscape. Hell, the crazy theocratic dictatorships of the world would just get an additional thing to brag about — they keep the people safe from these evil scary demonic influences, aren't they just so virtuous and powerful. Really didn't see where the problem was.

The end of Secrecy would bring _huge_ upheaval, politically and socially, but Michael wasn't convinced it was this great existential threat a lot of people spoke of it as though it was. It would be _messy_, but he didn't think that much would truly fundamentally change.

Other than having magical solutions on hand for things like, say, disease, or climate degradation — honestly, he thought the potential benefits were worth the risk. But that wasn't the point.

Of course, Secrecy probably wasn't going to last very much longer anyway. Apparently the mages had had serious trouble dealing with the proliferation of technologies like, say, radio, telephones, television. Before, they would often have a couple days to get to the scene of the "crime" to patch up whatever was done and contain news from spreading; now, information spread _much_ more quickly, they sometimes only had _minutes_. Given the wide range of live broadcasts, on radio and television, these days they actually needed to get there _before_ a breach of Secrecy ever occurred. And the internet — computers becoming smaller and cheaper, and more tightly networked — was only going to make that more and more difficult.

Michael was told Adjustment currently anticipated potential Secrecy-threatening events with the use of divination — they knew something was going to happen before it actually did, allowing them to mobilise in time to catch it. But sometimes things slipped through. And eventually, perhaps not even too far in the future, the sheer _number_ of such events will reach such a scale the mages simply won't have the manpower to contain them.

The existence of magic being revealed because the United Kingdom happened to be in the middle of a lightning-quick war against the mages sharing their territory was...perhaps not the _best_ way for the news to break. But if it happened...Michael guessed it happened.

"Right." Michael set his (now empty) coffee cup aside, hesitated for a moment, his tongue running along his teeth. "Thanks for the warning. I'll have to speak with the Taoiseach and the President about the situation here before I can guarantee what our position will be, but if it goes down the way I'm thinking you'll have our support — you might have noticed, we're not so happy with the Ministry either."

Victoria's lips twitched, a little. "Yes, I had noticed. If the worst case scenario should occur, and we must arrange a coordinated effort..."

Oh, _that_ was not going to go over well. Michael didn't see like he had much choice in the matter, though — he just had to hope it never came to that. Tipping his eyes up to the ceiling with a sigh, he said, "I'll read in the Minister for Defence. _That's_ going to be fun, that arse already doesn't like me..."

"Ireland doesn't read in her Ministers for Defence by default?"

"Not usually, no. The Republic has had a friendly relationship with the local mages since the beginning, and we've never had the sort of problems you do over here. It never seemed necessary."

"I see." There was a slight tilt to Victoria's lips, perhaps a little jealous of that. "Well. Did you have any further questions for me on this matter?"

Not really. There didn't seem to be a whole lot to say — the UK would do what they felt they must to exterminate the acromantulae, and if the local mages reacted badly, well, what happened would happen. Except, "When are your boys moving in?"

"I cannot tell you precisely — I'm uncertain myself. Before the end of the year, certainly."

Right. So he had a few weeks to get back to Dublin and warn everyone that shite might be hitting the fan rather earlier than they'd been planning. He was probably going to end up sharing a bottle and whinging long into the night with Barnie again. "All right. Thank you for keeping me informed, Victoria."

She nodded, slightly. Leaning forward a little, she picked up both maps, slipped them back into the file, slid it across the table closer to him before sitting back again. "After you've read in your Defence Minister, you should ask him to talk to ours — it would perhaps be wise for our Defence Ministries to be in contact as events proceed, should something unfortunate occur."

"Oh, I'm sure he'll be giving them a call whether I tell him to or not." If only to shout at his British counterparts for not telling him what the fuck was going on _years_ ago.

Victoria nodded again. "I believe that was all I needed to discuss. You have a concern of your own, yes?"

"Oh, right." Honestly, compared to the fucking bombshell Victoria had just dropped on him, Síomha publicly spitting in the Wizengamot's eye hardly even rated. "Well, it's looking like we might be late to breakfast if we stay here chatting too much longer, so I guess I'll keep it short. At the award presentation this morning, we expect there might be...something of a scene."

The slightest scowl twisted Victoria's forehead — though not much of one, scowling was hardly _dignified_, after all. "Let me guess: your pet sorceress is going to refuse the honour of being admitted to the Order of Merlin..._publicly_."

Michael entirely failed to hold in a smirk. "Hey, good guess."

"It's hardly much of a surprise. Honestly, I cannot imagine _what_ the Order was thinking nominating her, they couldn't have expected her to accept it."

He lifted a shoulder in a languid shrug. He had no idea either, and Síomha herself had been just as dumbfounded as anyone when she'd heard the news. The only theory Saoirse had was that the Wizengamot was trying to bribe the Irish nationalists somehow, to incentivise them to quit all that separatist shite they're doing, but really, did they think inviting Síomha into the Order of Merlin would work? Very silly. "Many of the political decisions the Wizengamot makes are completely incomprehensible to me, I've given up trying to figure them out.

"Anyway, this conversation _was_ going to be a lot longer, but, since we already have an understanding on maybe _going to bloody war_, this isn't nearly as big of an ask in comparison. The reasons I wanted to bring this to you ahead of time are two-fold. One, Saoirse informs me it's very possible the crowd may not react favourably." Victoria huffed, just a little, amused despite herself. "In fact, worst case scenario, Fionn thinks it's possible a few mages might get it into their heads to try to murder me. Again."

It was sort of surreal, the turn his life had taken over the last few months — that racists with magical superpowers might try to murder him was a legitimate concern he had to take precautions against. And not just in the magical world now, Saoirse had already intercepted two separate attempts by suspicious mages to get close enough to curse him in Dublin, and he'd lost count of how many cursed or potioned items had been sent to them. Not that they were hard to detect — they always used fancy magical parchment, and letters just appearing out of nowhere instead of coming in by way of the postal service with everything else were inherently suspicious — but he had a couple curse-breaker volunteers going through all of his post anyway. Someone had even broken into his home back in Listowel, apparently not realising he was hardly ever there, spent most of his time in Dublin these days — thankfully, his mother had been out at the time, that could have ended badly. (The little house was under magical protection now, he'd had to inform his family about magic, and the fact that a number of magical people wanted him dead, which had been _awkward_.)

Apparently, some mages weren't accustomed to muggles just waltzing into their world and having the audacity to demand they actually be treated with respect. Of course, it was known now that he'd basically spat in the Minister's eye when they'd met at the World Cup, so, _that_ didn't help...

But anyway, yes, that was kind of crazy to think about, that an unknown number of magical people wanted to kill him, he tried not to think about it. It was just...kind of stupid, though, that these magical people might target _him_ for something _Síomha_ was doing. He guessed the whole bodyguard thing might not help. As he understood it, Síomha's behaviour with him was rather like what mages might expect between a vassal and her lord — it was unusual to magical sensibilities for two people who _weren't_ members of the same family to have this kind of relationship. (The Republic allying with Saoirse was fine, theoretically; Síomha being assigned to protect him personally, more or less twenty-four-seven, was weird.) So, to the mages, their dynamic might make it look like anything Síomha did in public was by his leave, that he was the one in charge, and so he was the one responsible who should be retaliated against.

Ciarán hadn't actually been quite that straightforward when explaining the problem, but he was pretty sure he had the picture of it. Basically, if Síomha did something controversial in public (especially while Michael was also present), some people were going to blame him for it.

Whether it made any damn sense at all — flouncing into the World Cup or Hogwarts and telling everyone who had a problem with it to piss off, sure, those had been Michael's idea, Síomha and her people were just doing as ordered. He could understand why blaming him, the person in charge, but not Síomha made sense in _that_ context. This one? They hadn't invited _Michael_ to join the Order of Merlin. Síomha wasn't, like, his _thrall_ or some feudal shite like that, he didn't have any say in whether or not she accepted it. She'd _informed_ him she wasn't going to...though she had asked his opinion on whether she should try to be as polite as possible about it, or not even bother and probably cause a big fuss over it — making it clear she'd prefer the latter, but it _might_ put him at greater risk, so she'd take his opinion into account.

He'd told her to make it count, obviously. If you're going to cause a controversy _on purpose_, go big or go home.

So, really, this damn thing with the presentation coming up, it had _very_ little to do with him. But some mages were still going to blame him for it anyway, because stupid reasons. Michael fully expected he'd have to be exfiltrated under spellfire. Again.

Which was honestly just slightly annoying — he _hated_ portkeys.

Victoria just looked slightly exasperated, a hint of a smile twitching at the corner of her lips. "I am not surprised, honestly. You do have a talent for angering people, haven't you?"

"Hey, I'm not even going to be doing anything this time. This one's all on Síomha."

"You _exist_, Michael — that is provocation enough for some of these people."

Which didn't make him _less_ inclined to provoke them, of course. "Yes, well, that sounds like their problem."

This time Victoria actually did smile a little, shaking her head. "You are making Saoirse work for it, aren't you. That poor girl, you're going to give Síomha a heart attack before this is all over."

"She'll be fine." If nothing else, Michael was certain Fionn could just heal that sort of thing. "Depending on how...riled up the crowd is, we think it's possible they'll need get me out of there — if we're gone before anyone tries and throws a curse, it should calm down. But, second reason I'm bringing this to you, it occurs to me the British delegation will be seated right next to ours. I thought you deserved a warning, especially if you're bringing the kids along."

"Yes, I understand why you might be concerned. If violence _were_ to break out... I do trust William to be able to manage anything that is likely to happen." Well, of course, he _was_ a multi-centenarian metamorph, he was one of the most dangerous people in the valley right now. "Though, perhaps the children should stay in the castle until the ceremony is over, as a precaution."

"That's what I would do, I think." He didn't have children, or a Sir William, but.

Victoria nodded. "Thank you for the warning, Michael."

"Sure, least I could do."

They chatted the next couple minutes about something mostly inconsequential — he'd probably joke later that he'd literally been discussing the cost of tea from India with the Queen of England, but it'd actually been textiles — before Langley appeared, informing them Síomha was just down the hall. A couple last pleasantries, nice meeting, good cookies, blah blah, and they started for the door.

"_Mooother_, Father says we're ready to— Oh!" A girl had just skipped out of the hallway leading further into the suite. She was maybe twelve or so, dark hair intricately braided, dolled up in a blue and white dress Michael suspected could probably cover the rent for his Dublin flat for a month or two. Like Kenneth earlier, the girl was vaguely familiar, but given where Michael was right now she could only be Princess Mary. (He honestly couldn't say whether he'd ever even seen so much as a picture of her before being introduced to Victoria's family back on Hallowe'en.) Bobbing in a shallow, polite curtsey, she said, "I'm sorry, sir, I thought your meeting was finished."

"You didn't interrupt anything, Miss, I was on my way out." Michael gave Victoria a last nod, turned toward the door.

Or at least, he was about to — Victoria started speaking before he'd even started moving, a hint of a smirk on her lips. "Yes, Mary, it's quite alright. You remember the Tánaiste, of course?"

The girl blinked at him for a second, uncertain. Then her eyes widened, and...she _pointed_ at him — which was wild, Michael was used to all these wealthy old money types being too meticulously polite to go _pointing_ at people. "You're that Irish communist!"

Michael couldn't help it, he burst into laughter. He didn't know what it was, that the bloody Princess was just flat-out _pointing_ at him, Victoria glancing away and covering her mouth with the back of her hand, the...scandalised _glee_ on the girl's voice, it was just funny. Once he had control of his breath again, he crowed (in the sort of voice he used for the benefit of children, playing up the drama), "Ah, I see my reputation precedes me!" It would have to be something someone had told her, it wasn't as though they'd actually spoken much at all on Hallowe'en — she was a child, and he'd had diplomacy to do.

"Oh, I didn't mean it like that. Mother says you're entertaining, but harmless."

_Entertaining_, was he? A glance showed Victoria was wincing a little at that description — that's what happens when you actually talk about politics with your children, wasn't it — he'd have to tease her about this later. "_Harmless_? Now I think I am offended, we communists are very scary people, you know." He leaned in a little, putting even _more_ overblown drama on his voice. "I'm sure you've heard the stories about what my Comrades all over the world do to little princesses like you, hmm?"

Mary rolled her eyes, trying to look dismissive, but didn't quite hold in a scandalised sort of giggle.

Somehow, Michael ended up being held back in the suite until the whole family was ready, Kenneth reappearing with William (six or seven, he thought). The silly Lady Protector cloak had gotten back around Victoria's shoulders at some point — Langley had probably taken care of that, but Michael didn't notice, Mary was chattering at him the whole time demanding his attention. He probably could have found a way to lever himself out of the conversation, but they _were_ on their way out (they were seated at the same table anyway), and honestly it was just sort of entertaining, he didn't actually mind.

Despite some thinly-veiled accusations directed his way by political opponents — though more often from his mother, if he was being honest — just because he didn't have any children of his own didn't mean he didn't like them just fine. Besides, Victoria had _clearly_ expected Michael to extricate himself from the conversation as soon as possible. The longer he humoured Mary the more exasperated she got, it was funny.

They were met out in the corridor by Síomha and James (and also several of Langley's people). By the glances they shot him, it was obvious they'd both noticed Michael had been sort of captured. On the way out the door, while still babbling on about how neat magic was (same page there), Mary had slipped her hand into his elbow and started leading him out (he'd completely failed to hold in an amused huff) — it appeared the Princess had acquired an escort down to breakfast. In another situation, he might worry about how this might look...if she weren't literally a third his age and just being a silly headstrong child, this was just sort of precious.

After giving Victoria the expected pleasantries, his people came closer. Síomha just seemed like she couldn't decide whether she should be more _be_mused or _a_mused, her expression all weird and twisted, but James had definitely landed on the latter. "Sir, Princess," James said, tipping an imaginary hat. "I see we come too late."

"Ah yes, I was lulled into a false sense of security, ensnared when I least expected it. How devious, these English be."

Mary giggled. They got another exasperated look from Victoria (though Kenneth seemed about as amused as Michael was) before the group started down the hallway.

Michael hung back a little to ape a stumble, turning and stooping as though Mary really were bodily dragging him off. "They're taking me away! James, get back to Dublin, get a rescue going! Síomha, tell Alex to hide the files, just in case — he knows the ones. If I never see the sun again, someone take care of—"

"Oh, stop that, Mister," Mary said, lightly patting him on the arm. "We were talking about—"

"Ah! They've started in on the torture! I'll hold out as long as I can, but I don't—"

Michael could practically feel Síomha rolling her eyes at him, _and_ the preteen girl casually manhandling him giggled again, so, nailed it.

* * *

_omg I am such a wordy bitch..._

[reserve army of the Revolution] — _Michael is jokingly referring to the reserve army of labour, a Marxist concept._

[he'd literally quoted Lenin at one point] — _He would have _paraphrased _Lenin, perhaps something from _Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism_, because you can't just go name-dropping Bolsheviks in public like that. Presumably, the normies didn't identify it as something Lenin said._

[Holst's backchannel attempt at negotiating peace in the Levant] — _Johan Jørgen Holst played a large role in arranging the back-channel negotiations that led to the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO. —Lysandra_

_So, most of this is Sandra's worldbuilding. My headcanon involves mages interacting a lot more with muggle society on the day-to-day, mostly because the magical population in my headcanon is much smaller. With non-magical raw materials sourced from the muggle world, the economy is drastically different — no hidden magical plantation farms and literal slave classes and shite — and the mages tend to be a bit more modern in their thinking than the basically feudal approach we're taking here. (A few really isolated pureblood families are completely incapable of dealing with muggles, like the Weasleys, but.)_

_(BTW, my personal interpretation is that the _extreme _ignorance of even basic things like how the currency works displayed by many mages makes this kind of contact implausible, so the magical population is larger and more self-sufficient to compensate. It's probably the single largest difference between our worldbuilding. —Lysandra)_

_Starlight is mine, though. It's been elaborated on quite a bit in The Lady of (New) Avalon, the fem!Sirius story I've been working on as a side project. Bella really did let them see the Death Eaters' healers when they needed them, mostly because the rhetoric early on in the war — before they took a hard right into crazy fascist territory courtesy of opportunism, fucked up ritual magic, and Light propaganda — was more traditional dark, pro-magic. They were presenting themselves as the leaders of a dark utopia-in-the-making, which by default included the non-humans marginalised by Daylighter Britain, ergo the Starlighters were Bella's to take care of. If all had gone according to plan, they would eventually have become the commoners of New Avalon, supporting the academics and military once they formally split with Britain. Plus it gave the D.E. trainee healers good practice with _non_-battlefield healing. Kind of important, if they ever got that whole _independent nation _thing off the ground, having well-rounded medical professionals on hand. _

_I vaguely recall thinking I had more things to say as I was reading through, but I've worked forty-seven hours in the past four days, and I should have gone to bed about two hours ago, so I'm not entirely with it at the moment, and also I don't care enough to try to remember what my other note was. —Leigha_

_Some delay happened because we both got distracted by side-projects. At least I'm getting on track again — which probably means no updates for _By Gods Forsaken _for a while (after writing 100k words in like two weeks, seriously, what was that) — so we'll see how this goes from here. —Lysandra_


End file.
